Vi Gabba!
by FreestyleKneepad
Summary: Wrote this during my free time because I wanted to figure out how Gnar could have joined the League of Legends. When reports surface about a giant red beast destroying Piltover's streets, what will Vi, the city's enforcer, do to keep the monster under control? Told in Vi's POV and focuses heavily on Vi and Gnar. Language is kept mostly at T level, moderate violence/blood, low gore.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Deputy. We got a problem."

Crap.

I looked up from a newspaper I wasn't really reading with a frown. "I thought I told you to call me Sheriff when Cupcake isn't around, Lieutenant." I was about to look back down at the paper and go back to pretending to be busy when I noticed the worry on his face.

The grizzled man in the doorway looked at least fifty, with a face covered in signs of his growing age coupled with a life spent in the school of hard knocks. The only thing that concealed the scars and pockmarks on his blockish face was a thick, shaggy white beard that somehow managed to look unruly even when trimmed. He wore a grey suit jacket with a golden 'Piltover P.D.' badge visibly pinned to the vest underneath, and I could see the edge of his black officer's belt from where he leaned into the office door, looking at me with eyes that didn't seem excited to tolerate me. "Just because the Sheriff is away on official police business doesn't mean you get a promotion, Vi," he said, making sure to say my name this time instead of any fancy titles. "Shouldn't be sitting in her office, either, but that's neither here nor there." The tone of his voice made it clear he didn't want to deal with any sort of games right now, which made it harder to resist screwing with him more.

"Well, Phineas," I said, sure to use his first name instead of his last name to make the old ogre irritated, "I still call the shots when she ain't here, so we'll have to work on that."

"Later," he growled with an unexpected edge to his voice. Lieutenant Phineas Calhoun didn't hate me, but he was the type of guy to not tolerate screwing around when things needed to be done. That having been said, he seemed unusually abrupt today. Most days he'd at least let me get a few jabs in before getting down to business. "Like I said, there's trouble."

"S'wrong," I asked as I took my feet off the desk and casually dropped the paper in the vacated spot. "Papers need filing? Someone's rifle jammed? Yordle stuck in a tree?" It had been a slow day, so the thought of doing something both excited and annoyed me. Ripe situation for a little bit of sarcasm. "I think the scrubs can handle that."

Calhoun sighed and stepped into the room, grabbing the paper from the desk. His narrow eyes somehow narrowed even more, which I didn't think was possible. "A couple patrolmen reported a disturbance down in the Academic district. They went to investigate, we heard sounds of conflict, and their line went dead. They haven't checked in since." He shuddered and looked straight at my eyes. "We sent another squad to investigate, and they reported that the first patrol's car looked like it'd been hit by one of those Void things. Like some huge monster had just landed on it."

That got my attention, but it wasn't what sent a chill down the back of my neck. What did that was the realization that Calhoun was afraid of whatever the hell was tearing things up out there. Calhoun was a sour old bastard and would probably keel over in the next year if he didn't watch out, but he wasn't a coward. In fact, he'd been around longer than anyone on the force, including myself and the Sheriff, and he'd seen nastier things working the beat than I could imagine, and he still managed to be the toughest old man I'd ever met. He wasn't exactly full of piss and vinegar, but the old man didn't back down, and he sure as the stars didn't get scared by the boogeyman. That meant whatever was going down out there was bad news. Real bad news.

I rose from my seat, worry overtaking my urge to crack wise. "What else do you have?"

He nodded towards the door to the office, and as he turned to leave I followed him into the main office room. The Piltover P.D. building looks pretty average for the best damn city crime unit in Valoran, and that's because we don't waste the budget on the shiny pens and the special ink so all of our paperwork looks extra pretty. Pay your taxes in Piltover and you can bet that bottom dollar will be going to fund a well-oiled machine. The detective's department (home to the sheriff's office, as well as my dinky little deputy's office that was more like a workshop away from the workshop) looked like an average office building around here, with the only noticeable difference being the wanted posters tacked to the walls and the fact that every pencil-pusher in the room was armed with something and knew how to use it. They all wore suits, some with fancy trims or gear insignia to show their rank, but most looked fairly plainclothes. I don't think I could have stuck out more if I'd tried. Well, tried harder.

My typical ensemble is equal parts kickass and awesome. I'm a couple inches short of six feet, and built like a girl who knows how to handle herself. Most people notice the hair first- it's long on the right side, shaved off on the left side, and falls into long dreads going down to about my shoulder blades- and they tend to notice the "VI" tattoo on my left cheek second. Then the various studs and piercings, and then they take a step back and take in the whole image. If I like it, I'm probably wearing it- I usually rock a long-sleeved leather jacket that cuts off at the midriff, showing off a gray bustier and my armored shoulder pads. The stockings under my shorts tend to be covered in holes where stuff has gotten past the thick armor on my thighs, knees, shins and boots, and there's even a little frill from a tutu sticking out from under the bustier on my right hip. Cause, y'know, I'm just such a friggin' girly girl. Granted, I wasn't wearing the armor at the moment, but it bears mentioning because I had a bad feeling I'd be putting it on in short order. There's the gauntlets, too, but… well, let's not get to that yet. Good things come in good time, you know?

Calhoun led me to a desk where radio equipment was set up, an extension of the dispatcher's equipment elsewhere in the building. It was a good way to get a direct line out to the guys working the beat in case the Sheriff needed info immediately. Given that "needing info immediately" was the situation right now, it was a smart investment. See? That money could have gone to a comfy chair, but it didn't. Have some faith, citizens. Calhoun nodded at the man sitting at the desk, who took off the headphones over his ears. "You got 'em on the line?" Calhoun asked. The officer nodded and handed the headset to Calhoun, who handed it to me.

I heard a soft buzz of static from the other line, but I almost didn't notice it. All that 'marriage of magic and technology' stuff that hextech was known for was awesome for rifles, vehicles and giant gauntlets (be patient guys, we'll get to that amazing detail later), but this comm tech was still brand new, with all kinds of fun kinks to work out. I grabbed the microphone wired to the side of the machine and brought the correct communication protocol to the forefront of my memory, then decided protocol could suck it. "Yo, it's Vi. Are you guys dead?"

"That's a negative, ma'am," a voice on the other end buzzed into my ears. They called me ma'am? Must be new. "I don't know about the others. Unit 23 still hasn't reported in, and we've seen no signs. And their car…"

He trailed off, clearly shaken. "I heard," I responded succinctly. "Do you have any idea what the hell is-"

I got cut off by a loud crashing sound, a mixture of creaking steel and shattering glass, along with the rumble of stone foundations crumbling. A building just went down. Had to be. "Oh… o-oh gods," the cop stammered, "It's coming this way. G-get your gun, man. Watch the entrance."

I gripped the microphone a little tighter. "Talk to me, kid. Did you see it?"

"U-uh, right, yes, ma'am, we did." He paused, mumbling something to his partner under his breath. "It's huge. Bigger than a man. I think I saw it chuck part of a building at somebody."

That… wasn't what I was expecting to hear. "Gimme details. Animal? Machine?"

"It's like… a big freaking bear," he said nervously, "With red and blue fur, and tusks. Freaking TUSKS, ma'am." He began to say more but the words were drowned out by a roar, the kind you didn't hear if you lived somewhere that didn't have 'jungle'in its name. His partner screamed, and the sharp mechanical crack of his hextech pistol cut through the static. Another shot followed after, and another. Loud rumbling thuds began growing louder and increasing in frequency, and I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming.

"Get out of there!" I shouted, noticeably startling the cop sitting at the desk in front of me, but another roar cut me off, this one loud enough to send whining feedback through the machine. With a grunt of pain I yanked the headset off of my ears, and by the time it had fallen to the desk I was already on my feet and moving towards the door on the far side of the room, a small door leading to another office where I made my home for most of the day. "Where were they?" I asked Calhoun. I didn't have to look back, I knew he was following me.

"They got on-scene at Fifth and Woodson," he replied, only a few steps behind. "You need backup?"

I paused, only for a moment, and a smirk crept across my face. "It's okay if you're too scared to fight, Phineas. You're in charge around here 'till I get back." I knew he wasn't looking for an out- if I asked him to help, he wouldn't even hesitate- but this looked to be dangerous business, the kind of stuff a surly old cop might not be able to handle. He was better suited to keeping the place moving and, if things got nasty, he'd be the one to lead the scrubs. We came up to the door to my office, and I wrenched on the door handle in a hurry. As the door clicked open, I looked back at him with a grin. "Unless you're scared of a paper cut, you old geezer."

Calhoun smirked at me, for once showing that he occasionally possessed a sense of humor. "Snarky little brat," he chided as he turned around and headed back down the hall. "Keep your comms on."

"If I need words of inspiration from someone I'll find a coach," I shot back as the door shut behind me. As I turned around, I flicked the lights on, illuminating the small, messy office room with an upturned, damaged desk and an absolute mess of papers everywhere, equal parts conduct reports from Cupcake and incident reports from work that never managed to get filed. Shelves on the walls held small contraptions of varying lethalities and stages of completion, and every drawer probably held mechanics tools, screws, nuts, bolts, scrap metal and other mechanic equipment. If there was a method to the madness, it was a subtle method. The only thing kept in any sort of decent condition was the massive locker at the far side of the room, easily large enough to hold several people. But that's not what was inside the locker. Inside… well, inside were my babies.

I reached back to power on the hextech backpack I wore to work my gauntlets as I walked into the small room, and when I opened the locker the backpack let out a short chirp of activation and shuddered briefly. In response, the two gigantic hexsteel gauntlets on the table at the center of the room whirred to life, the sapphire gems in the backhands of the beasts glowing with a magical fire. A wide grin split my lips as I stuck an arm into each in turn. For a split second after I put my arm inside each gauntlet they felt immovably heavy, but the (coughbrilliantcough) hextech at work quickly compensated for the weight, and before I had to try the gauntlets lifted from the shelf in the locker, feeling as weightless as a second skin. Sure, they may have felt light to me, but these bastards weren't called 'vault breakers' for nothing.

I checked a few gauges and readouts built into the gauntlets to manage their pressure, then grabbed my goggles and the pieces of armor from a nearby shelf and finished suiting up. Once everything was set, I hurried through the precinct down to the garages, where my bike was ready and waiting. As I revved the over-sized grips the bike roared to life, a primal sound that filled mechanics, car fans and badasses everywhere with a fire in their guts (and maybe a little something more). A parking patrol immediately pulled over to give me clear passage as I gunned the engine and sped out of the lot. They weren't new, and you could tell because they knew the rule: Stay out of Vi's way.

You may not have guessed it, but I'm not your average officer of the law. I know, big shocker. I don't wear a uniform, I don't carry a badge (most of the time), and I don't tend to arrest people. They call me the Piltover Enforcer, and I earn that title. You break the law, you deal with Piltover's Finest red-and-blues. You commit a murder and get away, you get hunted by the Sheriff. You try to terrorize _my people_ and mess up _my city_, and you have the _balls_ to go for some of my cops too? That's when you have to deal with me, and trust me, I didn't get the gauntlets and the armor to play goddamn pattycake.

I knew the city well enough that I didn't have to worry about where I was going. I wove the bike through traffic with the kind of expert touch that would terrify anyone who wasn't at least slightly crazy. A loud siren wailed from a speaker on the back of the bike, clearing the road enough to let me by, although from the way I was moving, I almost didn't need it.

The traffic slowly thinned as I got closer to the Academic district, and as I homed in on the intersection that the second squad had reported from, any pedestrian or vehicular traffic all but vanished entirely. I turned off the siren as the road opened out and slowed down just enough to avoid a pothole the size of a car in the middle of the road, cursing as I swerved around it and glancing back at it only a moment to make sure I hadn't been hallucinating. I almost freaking drove right into the next one as a result, and when I saw the road ahead of me had been reduced to slabs of asphalt haphazardly cracked and scattered along the street, I pulled the bike over and parked it on the side of the road.

By the time I made it to Fifth and Woodson, I had a feeling that I was dealing with something reminiscent of some monsters from Zaun that I'd rather forget. The Academic district was a mecca of scientific growth and techmaturgical progress, and the place was modernized to the point that I expected just about everything I saw there to be hovering placidly in midair within the year. It was clean, well-kempt and orderly, and probably the most crimeless part of the city. Normally, it would be a peaceful and downright chipper sort of place, but today it reminded me of those pictures I had seen of the ruins in the Shurima desert. If there was a large, flat side of a wall or building facing the street, it was likely either dented or torn down entirely. The streets were covered in a thin layer of rubble and dust from the destruction, but thankfully there weren't many signs of casualties- these people tended to be the scientists and the philosophers, who already weren't the type to stand up to danger with bravery and derring-do. They must have cleared out the moment something went 'thump' a bit too loud. Made things easier for me… somewhat.

What set me on edge as I moved through the ruined streets wasn't the destruction or the chaos of the scene, though. It was the silence. Since I had parked the car, I hadn't heard any ambient sounds of destruction, screams or terror or even animalistic roars, and it was unnerving as all hell. I followed the path of broken glass and even more broken pavement for a few minutes when I found the squad car of unit 23, the first responders on the scene. It looked like a giant had crumpled it up like a wad of paper and chucked it in the corner. Twisted metal and fractured shards of glass stuck out every which way, to the point where I couldn't even tell if there was anyone inside of the damn thing. The idea that a living, breathing thing had done this kind of damage was something I didn't want to dwell too much on, because odds were it would be turning its attentions on me before too long. Get it together, Vi, you've got giant freaking monsters to fight. Get your head in the game.

I reached down to the small radio on the belt on my hip and hit the button with an oversized metal finger to spark it to life. "It's Vi. I found the 23 car, it's wrecked. No idea where the boys in blue are, or if they're still kicking." Something heavy settled itself in my stomach as I spoke the words, but I waited for the reply from dispatch.

Calhoun's staticky voice came back after a few seconds. "Understood. Any idea where it's headed?"

"None," I replied slowly, scanning the area for any sign of it. "It's like the thing just up and vanished, I-"

I cut myself off as the sound of a high-pitched chitter cut through the silence like a knife. I let go of the button and set the comm device back on my belt before heading in the direction of the sound. While my pace was already hurried, by the time I had crossed the street I found myself breaking into a full run, the anxiety and tension turning to adrenaline as I picked up speed. As I whirled around the corner towards where I had heard the noise, my fists clenched so quickly and tightly that I heard the metal clank roughly against itself in the palms of my gauntlets' hands. My eyes darted around, quickly trying to find whatever made the noise, only to see… nothing.

Confusion set in quickly, and when further nothing reared its ugly head, followed by a heaping helping of nothing, I swore to myself and lowered my hands. And that's when I heard the whistle.

I barely had time to jerk my head to the side before a whirling boomerang flew past me, whacking into the wreckage of a nearby building and getting lost in the clutter. As I looked to its origin I saw what looked like a yordle, if the yordle had a fashion sense dating back a few hundred or thousand years. He was an orange creature, all mousey features and big, dark eyes, with ruffled, messy fur and huge bat-like ears tipped blue. Two small teeth jutted out from his lower jaw, and he wore a small bird's skull on his head like a hat, the only article of clothing he wore aside from a small and ragged brown loincloth around his waist. If there was any such thing as a wild yordle, this little guy would likely fit the description. He chattered at me in high-pitched gibberish, and when I realized this little guy wasn't the hulking titan that caused all of this, apprehension turned into concern.

"Hey there little buddy," I asked slowly and with as much of a gentle tone as a total badass like myself could muster, "Who're you?" Even while I spoke to the little yordle I did what I could to avoid losing sense of my surroundings. Whatever had caused all of this seemed capable of a seriously nasty vanishing act.

The yordle babbled some more, then hopped onto a nearby piece of rubble and stuck its hands out to either side. "Gnar gabba!" he shouted, then repeated the 'gnar' part of it a second time as he hopped off and pointed up at the rubble behind me. I slowly turned my head to look back at the rubble, and felt something light as a feather land on my shoulder and flash by. Reflexes kicked in and one hand clamped down on it, but caught only air- the yordle had already flashed by and landed on the rubble, scrabbling through it until he found a protruding stick of bone- an unburied part of the boomerang from before. I watched him struggle to unearth the thing for a moment with squealing strains of effort before he looked back at me, jabbering away in an unfamiliar tongue and pointing at the boomerang.

My comms crackled to life again, and I heard Calhoun's voice break in. "Vi! Are you there?!"

The sudden voice made me jump a bit, but I grabbed the radio and spoke into it quickly. "Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing here, I don't know where it went." I looked around again, waiting for a colossal monster to land on me out of nowhere, but when it didn't happen I walked over to the rubble and effortlessly yanked the boomerang out of the wreckage. The yordle chittered excitedly and hopped a little bit where it stood until I handed him the boomerang, and when I held out an open gauntlet he gladly hopped into my palm and settled himself down. "I'm coming back to the station, send out a rescue crew with a couple units to look for survivors."

"Affirmative," Calhoun barked, and the comms went silent again. I took a few steps toward my bike where I had left it a few blocks back and looked down at the yordle, still not sure where it came from.

"You've got some explaining to do, little guy," I said as I started walking again. The yordle looked up at me with its huge eyes and tilted its head slightly, then returned its attention to the bone boomerang, gnawing at it like a contented puppy. With a sigh, I turned my attention to returning home and tried not to think too hard about what could have made a gigantic terror-beast just… vanish.

My first guess was Jinx. Probably wrong, but I loved wanting to punch her. Second guess… no suspects. Crap.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

A radio hooked up to a pair of large speakers in the corner of my workshop blasted incoherent punk rock as I laid on the cool paved floor in the middle of the room, positioned strategically beneath the chassis of my motorcycle so I had access to the suspension. Over the past few hours of working on the vehicle I had hit a rhythm and now I cranked my wrench away in time to the off-beats of the drums, and it had lulled me into a sort of daydream more than once that night. Following the afternoon's fun driving at high speed around potholes the size of small cars, I had found a few problems with the bike that had made it harder to steer suddenly in situations like that. Normally I didn't think much of minor stuff and edge cases, but given that I'd probably be chasing whatever had caused that kind of mayhem a second time, it paid to be prepared. While the floor was cold and flat, it was far from bare- in fact, the same could be said for most of my workshop.

Like my office down at the department, my workshop was covered with things to either create or destroy- shelves and drawers covered the walls, packed with bits of scrap and pieces to various assemblies lying on the countertops in multiple stages of completion. Where a wall wasn't covered by a tool rack or shelf, I had put up posters of various bands I'd seen around the city, everyone from Pentakill to Rage Against The Hextech. A half-built hot rod sat in the corner of the room furthest from the closed garage door, partially covered by a tarp that helped remind me that I hadn't tinkered with it in a few months. Nearby the door into the rest of the house sat my gauntlets, resting against the wall as opposed to stored in any sort of locker, with the pack powering them sitting next to it, inanimate and almost docile where it lay.

While the place certainly looked like my type of dwelling- and I did sometimes sleep there- if you were to go through the door leading into the rest of the place, you would find upper-class and extremely nice-looking decorations, full of whites and floral patterns and comfortable class. After all, like my office in the police department building, I only really held residence in the one room- the rest belonged to someone else. In this case, it was the Sheriff herself, a woman named Caitlyn.

There is no better example of polar opposites than the two women in charge of Piltover's police department; myself the deputy and Caitlyn the sheriff. Cupcake- sorry, Caitlyn- grew up in the more affluent part of town, born to a statesman and an influential researcher. Keep in mind that at that time, 'affluent' was saying something- Piltover wasn't always a shining example of law and order (blue-haired stick figures with fish-shaped rocket launchers notwithstanding), it was Caitlyn who dropped the crime rate into the single digits in the first place. Growing up in a safer and more expensive part of town was a luxury not many could afford, but unlike most, Caitlyn has used her silver spoon for generosity and the betterment of the city around her. She's smart, the smartest cop I've ever met, and hasn't squandered the wealth she's inherited or earned. But there's a way she holds herself that never lets you forget where she came from, a timbre to her voice that implies authority even without the badge.

And then there's me. The aristocrats and statesmen that raised Caitlyn as one of their own would have called me a 'street urchin' and rolled up their noses, and often times they did. I lived in the outskirts of the city, where the law was too scared to reach (and to some degree, still is). I grew up in an environment no kid should have to endure- no parents, no family, no home, desperate and hungry on alternating days. Handouts were a myth I didn't believe in, and it meant I had to rely on me and nobody else. I'm… not proud of what I had to do to get by. I lied, cheated, stole, all in the name of survival. Eventually I found a gang to take me in, make me feel like I had a home, a place to go where I wasn't afraid. But they were no better, worse if anything, and it took me more bank heists and robberies than it should have to realize that they were headed down a road I didn't want to follow. The criminal records and officer files say I'm 'reformed', but the truth is that I wised up. And one of the first things I learned the hard way is that all the changes of heart won't change where I'm from.

That juxtaposition in mind, you can imagine how strange it was for me to move into Caitlyn's house shortly after joining the force. Officially, I was 'relocated to a secure location within close proximity to the Sheriff to allow for close monitoring of my behavior', because you don't just give a known bank robber a police badge and expect them to walk the straight and narrow because you asked nicely. Unofficially, I think Caitlyn saw where I came from and knew I couldn't go back there. Not after what I'd seen and done. She'll never admit it, but she saw a chance to help me help myself and took it.

That transition was still the strangest thing I've ever had to get used to. Her place is really nice… too nice. Everything is tastefully decorated to convey a sense of wealth and class, and she has two or three servants hired by her parents long before she could walk who wait on her and do chores around the house. I hated all of it. Not the actual people who work here in her service- they're nice folks, always willing to help- but I hate being waited on by someone else. It's… weird. Unnerving. If I wanted something done around here, I did it myself. Same as I always have. The servants protested at first, but two things happen when you butt heads with me- you either win right away or give up trying after awhile. They didn't manage the former, and most eventually went with the latter, giving me pretty much free access to the basements and cleaning facilities they used so I could wash my grimy clothes by myself. Despite that freedom, I still didn't like sleeping on a cloud-like bed or eating with fine silver, and so I spent most of my time in the workshop, living in the dirt and grime and tools and punk rock. And damnit, I liked it.

I was torn from my reflection by the very rock that made me happy being turned down, and then off altogether. The nerve of some people! I yanked my head out from under the bike and aimed a glare directly at whoever had turned down the music, only sparing a second to check who it was. "This had better be real important, Jeeves."

Standing at the door with a hand on the stereo's volume dial was an elderly yordle, whose name was certainly not Jeeves. Not that it stopped me. He stood all of three feet tall and wore an adorably small and well-fitting black suit, with a little-bitty bow tie and teensy-weensy white gloves. He looked vaguely like one of the fuzzballs from Bandle City, but his tawny brown fur was maintained very carefully, with the closest thing to unruliness being his bushy white mustache and equally bushy eyebrows framing his face. "I've requested of you on multiple occasions to kindly refrain from using that surname, Miss Vi," he said curtly, his voice stately and the picture of refinement despite being adorably high-pitched. The bastard.

My eyes narrowed. "And I've told you that if you called me 'Miss' again I'd punt you into the laundry chute." Jeeves (or, if you really want to know his real name, Bradford) was the only one of the servants who absolutely refused to refrain from politeness and upper-class behavior around me, to the point where he occasionally treated me like a little girl who didn't know her manners, which was partially true. Partially. The stubborn bastard knew just how to get on my nerves, and I knew just how to get on his. Honestly, sometimes I looked forward to butting heads with him. Sometimes, but not now. "What is it?"

"Miss Caitlyn has returned," he continued, shrugging off my idle threat in just the right way to irritate me without making me want to actually act it out. "She wishes to speak with you immediately. I asked her to give you time to clean up," he added, looking me over, "But we both agreed it would be a futile effort."

I looked down at my clothes with apprehension. I wore a set of gray mechanic's coveralls, the top half zipped down with the sleeves wrapped around my waist like a belt, and a white tank top showing off a bit of my midriff but otherwise covering all the naughty bits that would have gotten Jeeves in a tizzy. Of course, he wasn't referring to the clothes so much as the coating of dirt and grime over them, which was a mixture of oil, dirt, grease, and all sorts of other things that had no place in a posh environment such as this. "Jeeves," I said with fake shock, "That almost hurts my feelings."

Jeeves nodded dismissively and stepped aside, one arm gesturing through the door back into the house. "If you please, Miss Vi," he responded, again trading honorific for nickname, "Miss Caitlyn is quite upset."

Oh. …Well, crap. It had to be about the stuff from this afternoon. After all, I hadn't given her any other reasons to be pissed off… lately. I had filed the reports and everything to cover my tracks, but go figure, the detective might have sniffed me out. Then again, she might not have. If I kept my cool, maybe she wouldn't be able to find out. Well, okay, it wasn't the best plan, but nothing better came to mind.

I followed Jeeves out of the workshop and through winding hallways leading into various pristinely-cleaned rooms until we came to Caitlyn's study, a comfortably-sized room for four or five people colored a soft, dark purple that made the room feel strangely cozy. A large fern sat near the entrance to the room in a brown ceramic pot, and next to it was the first of many bookcases that wrapped along the walls, stopping only for a painted brick fireplace at the far end of the room. Several easy chairs sat around a small coffee table at one side of the room, and at the other side was a thick oak desk, carved with master craftsmanship- a gift from the mayor of Bandle City after finding a particularly dangerous yordle sorcerer terrorizing the city several years back. Behind the desk was a large and exceedingly expensive-looking chair, framed on either side by a trophy case with marksmanship awards and various accolades and trophies, and framed overhead by a large mantelpiece with a handcrafted hextech rifle mounted at its center. In that chair sat the Sheriff of Piltover, and she nodded to the small yordle in front of me as I stepped into the room. "Thank you very much, Bradford, that will be all."

Sheriff Caitlyn was a gorgeous woman with milky blue eyes and dark hair that almost seemed violet in some lights as it fell down to her waist in the back and curled in a slight twist over her chest. She had a slight figure, all curves and smooth skin, but I knew better- under that milky skin lay the lean muscle of an athlete, muscle that didn't command power like mine did, but instead raw speed and agility. Her thin brows framed sparkling eyes with a knack for looking inquisitive even when not asking questions, and her button nose and lips colored a few shades darker than normal painted a picture of a professional whose beauty was used as a tool to hide a razor wit. Normally she wore a purple outfit with brown boots and gloves that seemed to turn the eyes of every man that wasn't blind or a gem knight, but tonight she wore more businesslike wear, including a white blouse that tucked into a pastel purple business skirt, which matched the jacket draped over the side of the chair. It was a strange outfit to see, but it's not every day she has to go and speak to committees and governing bodies all day. You'd have to kill me to get me in something like that.

"Of course, Miss," Jeeves said with a polite bow. Caitlyn turned her eyes on me, and I felt a spotlight shine on my face- sometimes she could really make me feel like a scared little girl being interrogated by an angry cop, something that had happened too many times growing up.

"Good evening, Vi," she said with a careful charm in her voice. "Let's chat."

"'Sup, Cupcake?" I replied as casually as humanly possible, making my way over to one of the easy chairs and slumping down so heavily that I think I saw Jeeves wince at the grease stains I might have caused on his way out.

"I heard about an altercation over in the Academic district while I was away." Her tone of voice and posture were relaxed, but businesslike. "What can you tell me about what happened?"

"You read the report?" I asked.

Caitlyn gestured to a manila folder on her desk. "I read the Lieutenant's report," she said with a tone like she had gone over this a thousand times, "But we both know how inconsistent yours can be. When you do file them, that is. That's why I'd rather discuss it with you."

I shrugged. "We got reports of some huge thing tearing stuff up over in the Academic district. They sent patrols down but didn't hear back, so I went in."

Caitlyn nodded, steepling her fingers in front of her mouth. "What did you see?"

I opened my mouth, but after a second I closed it. I knew what I had told Calhoun, but it still didn't make a bit of sense. I scratched at the dreads at the base of my neck and sighed. "Nothing, really. I mean, the place was trashed. It looked like freaking Cho'Gath had stomped through. But there wasn't any monster there. No hungry void terror, no berserk golem, no giant red bear, nothing." I dwelled on a thought for a moment before I added, "Didn't see any people either. Normal or cop." It hadn't quite occurred to me how creepy that was until I really thought about it, and in a way I was glad I hadn't until now.

"You're saying it just… vanished?" The skepticism in her voice was pretty clear. Caitlyn didn't believe magic was fake or anything, but I had to agree with the thought that giant district-wrecking monsters didn't just go 'poof'. Something didn't add up.

"Poof," I confirmed, using my hands to imitate a puff of smoke bursting out of thin air.

She frowned, her eyes pointed in my direction but no longer focused on me- she was trying to solve the puzzle in her head, and coming up blank. "That's… unsettling," she finally commented. "What evidence did you find at the scene?"

I shrugged. "Aside from craters and broken glass, nothing."

"Are you sure?"

The question caught me off-guard. I wasn't sure what my answer would tell her, or what she wanted to know. Maybe if she knew about… no, no one saw me do that. Did they? "Uh, yeah. Nothing that mattered."

Caitlyn's eyes seemed to bore into mine, and before long I looked away. "We'll have to wait until we can hear from any witnesses who may have fled the scene, then," she said with finality. As I turned back to look at the sheriff she sighed, collected some of the loose papers on the desk, stuck them in the manila folder, and rose to her feet. I rose as well, possibly a bit too quickly, but I was eager to return to my workshop. Getting grilled by Caitlyn always made me uneasy; she was too damn good at it, and I had too many bad memories for it to ever be anything remotely comfortable.

"Looks like," I said as a way to ease out of the conversation.

Caitlyn, apparently sensing my urge to see my way out of the talk, gathered her things and moved to the door. "You may return to what you were doing, Vi," she said in passing. "Supper will be at eight. And before you go to sleep tonight, I want to know where you hid the yordle."

I froze where I stood, shock making my eyes wide. I tried to keep it under wraps, but I looked at her and saw the same eagle-eyed glare she gave a perp dodging the law in return. "I… I don't-"

"Don't you even _start_ with me," Caitlyn interjected, her temper finally seeping through, "Lieutenant Calhoun saw you bring it in and hide it in your office, and was going to confiscate it when you left. It could very well have important information that could lead to saving innocent people. Don't you dare lie to me."

Her words had a contemptuous edge of ice to them, and I could understand why. Caitlyn had no tolerance for anyone who got in the way of the law. Generally speaking, she trusted me enough to let me handle things my way and gave me more leeway than some officers thought I was due, but she was still sharper than I could ever be. Sometimes I wondered why I even tried. "He's in my room," I said with a tone of defeat.

"Let's go talk to him," she replied and immediately stepped out of the study and began down the hall towards my bedroom.

"Cait, hang on-" I started, but Caitlyn cut me off again.

"I'm not in the mood, Vi," she said with a level tone, her words lacking the frost from before but still enough to make me hesitate.

"It's not that, it's that-" I continued, but Caitlyn had already reached the door to my room and turned the handle.

Okay, let's be clear- I don't really spend a lot of time in my bedroom. I just kinda chuck stuff in there and leave. But even I admit it could use some tidying up. Like, a lot of tidying up. When Caitlyn opened the door, I was reminded of why. Normally, bedrooms in the house were various monochromatic hues of one soft pastel color or another, and often came complete with a large four-post bed, a thick wooden dresser and a separate, personal bathroom. The floor was covered in a thick, luscious shag carpeting, the type comfortable enough to zap you if you're walking around in socks.

Looking in my bedroom, you could see the bed through all of the mess, and… that was about it. The walls were plastered with more band and movie posters, most of them unnecessarily violent and all of them completely destroying any air of class about the room, not that it needed help. The drawers of the dresser were scattered about the room, and there were clearly no segregation laws in place preventing various clean and dirty clothes from mixing on the floor to the point where you were probably better off just chucking them all in the wash than trying to figure any of it out. A well-used drum set took up one corner of the room, and at the opposite end of the room hung a large punching bag, with a crude drawing of Jinx right at face level on the well-beaten leather. Even the bed was barely a bed anymore- I had snapped the four posts off awhile ago, and it was barely more than a mattress with legs at this point. Comfortable, but not ritzy, just how I liked it.

Only problem was that the bed was occupied- an orange ball of fuzz with a bushy, blue-tipped tail was rolled up in the middle of the bed, which twitched with surprise as the door opened. I pushed past Caitlyn and made my way into the room, careful to keep my voice low. "Hey there, little buddy…" In return, the yordle hopped to its feet, babbling away in high-pitched syllables, and chucked a boomerang right at my head. Reflex kicked in and I snatched at the thing, barely catching it out of the air in time. "Hey! I told you not to do that!" The yordle bounced on the bed and landed on its head, wiggling its butt in my direction. The grin on its face eased my tension- it was only playing, apparently- but Caitlyn still sighed and stepped up to speak to it as if it was sitting there sipping a cup of tea. I imagine she liked to pretend people did that all the time, just like her.

"Do you have a name?" she said to the yordle.

"Gnar! gabba" the yordle shouted. "Kabba wob Gnar shugu!"

"He says 'Gnar' a lot," I commented. "I was gonna name him Oliver."

"Awriva!" the yordle shouted, bouncing up and down on the bed with childlike glee.

That got a laugh out of me. "Hey Oliver, say, 'Make my day'."

"Awriva!"

I was about to continue, but Caitlyn cut me off. "That's enough, Vi."

"Vee!" The yordle shouted. My face lit up with a grin- it was off, but close enough to be downright adorable.

"Gnar?" Caitlyn asked. The yordle looked up at her quizzically. Guess that was the thing's name. Dammit, I liked the name Oliver. "Can you talk to me, Gnar?"

"Meechoo bah!" Gnar exclaimed, hopping from the bed with surprising speed and landing on my chest before I realized what was happening.

"Holy sh-" I started, but calmed down a second later as he climbed his way up to my shoulder. He was small for a yordle, and even so he was surprisingly light. "Uh, Cait, I think that counts as 'yes but no'."

Caitlyn sighed, leaning against the door frame of the room. "Barring any sort of brain-scrambling magic, that rules him out as a witness," she commented with an edge of exhaustion in her voice.

"That's what I was trying to tell you," I replied as he sniffed at one of my dreadlocks. "I talked to him for awhile but couldn't make heads or tails out of whatever language he was speaking." I smiled a bit. "He's tough little guy, but it looks to me like he just wants to play. I dunno why he doesn't speak our language, but he doesn't seem like a threat. I was gonna bring him to the Yordle Academy tomorrow to see if they had any ideas."

"So why didn't you leave him at the department?" Caitlyn asked. Her tone wasn't like before, not demanding, just inquiring. "You didn't have to lie to the others."

I put a hand over Gnar's eyes, feigning terror. "You kidding, Cupcake? They'd question him, then throw him in a holding cell! He was meant to fly free!"

"So instead you threw him in your room?" she retorted.

"Hey, I didn't say I had all the answers," I shot back. "Plus it's not like my room can get a whole lot worse." I smiled as Gnar began to pick at the strap of my tank top and I swatted lightly at his hand. "Easy there, tiger."

Caitlyn allowed a weary smile to show on her face, and it made me happier as well. "He certainly seems to like you, and you him."

I smiled back at her, mine full of enthusiasm. "Well, it helps that he's even more adorable than you when you're mad."

I didn't get to see Caitlyn's reaction before let out a long sigh and put a hand to her face. "Right. Well. You're in charge of him until we get him to the Academy," she said with a tone of voice that refused the very notion of compromise. "You feed him, you take care of his messes, and if he breaks anything, it's your fault." She turned to leave and added over her shoulder "And if you so much as consider letting him into my room, I'll throw you in a cell for the month."

I let the threat slide off my back and grabbed the yordle from my shoulder, holding him just under his arms like a puppy. He raised his arms wide and shouted "Vee!" again with a cheery smile showing me his teeth, especially the two larger canines jutting out from his lower jaw. I couldn't help but grin in response.

"This is gonna be great."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Like many nights, I spent the rest of that night in my workshop, fiddling with my bike. The only difference this time was that I had Gnar crawling around the room, fiddling with bits of the bike and various little doodads I had lying around. Fortunately for him about ninety-nine percent of the stuff he messed with didn't work, but occasionally I noticed him fidgeting with parts of a gun or the chainsaw attachment for my gauntlets that I'd been tinkering with last Harrowing and I had to yank him away before he hurt himself. Once I had ran interference enough times I got wise, and after pulling key parts out of anything remotely dangerous I felt comfortable enough to relax, and with that relaxation came sleep.

The next morning, I quickly realized that Gnar seemed content sticking to me like glue. I woke up with him nuzzled by my arm on the small mattress in the corner of my workshop, he sat with me while I ate breakfast (and yeah, he got a bit of food from it, I'm not a monster), and the little guy even tried to get in the shower with me. Now, granted, he hadn't shown any sign of yordle-like intelligence yet, and granted, it had been a long time since someone had wanted to… well, anyways, I wasn't about to let that happen. Despite his babbling protests, he sat at the door outside the bathroom while I showered and changed. After meeting that skeevy rat bastard Teemo, I can never be too sure in my privacy.

Gnar didn't seem too enamored to get on my bike- I didn't think too much of it at the time, but the little guy spent the initial ride from the Academic district down to the station and then to my place pretty much stuck to me, likely out of fear. He squealed with surprise when the bike roared to life, but hesitantly latched himself onto my arm and crawled up to a spot on the bike's second seat before he seemed to relax and adapt to the rumbling machine. I started off slow, and while it got him on edge again, by the time I was on a main street he seemed to realize that the bike wasn't going to grow teeth and try to eat him anytime soon.

We drove at a leisurely pace through the streets of Piltover for a little over half an hour- the Academy wasn't going anywhere and with Caitlyn back I wasn't needed at the precinct, so there was no reason to hurry. Cruising through Piltover is always an interesting pastime just because, with a city packed with amateur inventors and scientists among the average people, you're always bound to see something interesting. Gnar shifted on the seat and twisted his head around as we drove, trying to take in just about everything he could, his little nose twitching wildly in an attempt to soak up as many scents as he could.

As I was in a mood to oblige him, I decided to stop at a small market going on in one of the merchant's squares. It was like a cultural and ethnical melting pot- a noble-looking Ionian sold finely-crafted silk clothes next to a man from the icy north of Freljord who was selling dairy goods, kept from perishing in boxes surrounded by icy crystals which seemed altogether too dry and un-melted to be natural in the summer heat. I had been around these sorts of markets before, but not in an unofficial capacity- despite Piltover's low crime rate, tech was sold here among the merchants, and that meant the odds of black market sales in some of the stalls was higher than you'd think. I'm sure I looked a bit strange, walking through the market with a chattering yordle holding my hand, but I saw more recognition than confusion. I'd been on both sides of the law around some of these people- I used to steal from merchants like these guys for food as a kid, and once I'd turned my life around we had come down once or twice to arrest black market dealers. I should have expected it, honestly- it's hard not to be recognized when you tattoo your name on your cheek.

Eventually I found someone I recognized back, and the recognition put a wide smile on my face. "Qarif!" I shouted, waving my free hand as I made my way through the crowd towards his booth. Qarif'Ahib was a fifty-something-year-old man with round features and a rounder belly who somehow managed to have a permanent tan. His face was mostly smooth with the exception of a small black goatee he kept curled, and his features were often described as 'jolly' and 'friendly', as fit his personality. He wore humble robes with a colorful shawl draped around his neck, and he, like his booth, smelled of freshly baked breads and spices. His family was originally from a nomadic tribe based on the outskirts of the Shurima desert, but he and his wife and children had relocated to Piltover and settled down here years before I was born. Qarif was a good cook and a fantastic human being, and had cared for me many times when I was cold, hungry and alone. In return, I had protected him and his family whenever things got bad. I take my debts pretty seriously when someone's earned my trust and respect.

Qarif glanced up at the sound of his name and noticed me almost instantly, his mouth splitting in a way that showed he had a lot of practice smiling. "Vi!" he said with jovial delight, "It's been so long!" He stepped around the corner of his booth as I made my way over, and before I could respond he grabbed me in a dear friend's hug, the kind that squeezes the life out of you in a way that's painful but enjoyable. "You look well, how have you been?"

Once he stopped pushing my ribcage into my lungs, I wheezed out "Good, and you?"

"I am well," he responded, his face never losing the smile, "And who is your friend?"

Gnar looked up at the man with a face full of confusion. "Oh, this is Gnar," I said in response, stepping an inch away to give the yordle some space. Gnar immediately moved closer to me, one arm wrapped around my leg. "Sorry, it's not you, he's just not much of a people person right now."

"Oh, it's quite alright," Qarif replied, his good mood not wavering, "Perhaps he is hungry?"

That got me interested. Qarif was a baker, one of the best I knew, and moreover he was an experimenter, like a lot of the people in this city. "What's on the menu today?"

Qarif's round eyes lit up even more, which I didn't think was possible. "Oh, allow me," he said as he headed back around to the booth, "I've made something I think you'll definitely enjoy. Please, sit down, relax." I did as he said, plopping down in one of the chairs on the side of the booth. Gnar hopped into one of the others and stood in it, his hands on the countertop as he used his eyes, ears and nose to inspect the place. The booth wasn't huge, but Qarif used the space well- everything was organized and clean, and the stovetop oven in the corner was large enough to cook for two or three people without needing more space. The street-facing side of the booth held a few racks with loaves of fresh bread on them, the scent wafting through the streets and likely drawing eyes if not customers. As he worked away, I decided to make small talk. Not one of my strong suits, but Qarif knew that and didn't mind.

"How's the family?" I asked him after a moment of silence.

"They are doing quite well," Qarif said as he reached into a small cupboard under the countertop and slapped a couple of hefty steaks onto the stove-top grill. My mouth watered and I had a feeling if I didn't keep track of Gnar he'd make a move for the meat, cooked or not. "My son wishes to continue the family business instead of studying. I told him he is in the best place in the world to pursue a dream in science, if he did not go for it then all of the meat I have fed him likely went to his head."

"I dunno," I responded, "We have a surplus of scientists around here, but not enough people making food that doesn't taste like it was made in a lab."

Qarif laughed, a hearty sound that resounded with satisfaction. "Do not give him any ideas." He flipped the steaks and the sizzling sound almost made me forget the conversation completely.

"Have you heard from the tribe?" I continued, forcing myself not to drool. In my efforts to pay attention to the conversation, I noticed a pang of sadness cross over Qarif's face.

"Not lately," he responded with a bit of hesitation, his voice still happy but lacking the jovial glow from before. "I'm sure they are fine, but it's been quite some time now."

"When was the last time you spoke with them?" I asked.

"Last summer," he responded, and I could see his mood fading. Crap, way to go, Vi. Master conversationalist, watch and learn, kids.

"Sorry," I said with a noticeable undertone of regret.

"It's quite alright," he responded as he reached over to the rack and got a loaf of his fresh bread, the scent of which brought to mind all sorts of childlike joys. He grabbed a long, grooved bread knife and began to cut slices. "I'm sure I'll hear from them soon." He finished making the meal in silence, and only as he was assembling the sandwiches did I see his features brighten again. "Until then, eat. Be happy." He handed one plate to me and another to the yordle and I had to fight to keep from shoving my face directly into it and working my jaw until the whole thing was gone. Gnar had no such reservations, and the fervor with which he tore into the sandwich made Qarif laugh.

I took a bite, and immediately lost track of the world around me long enough to drown in the flavor. I felt my eyes close and my head tilt back, but let it happen as I got lost in the flavor. The steak was piping hot, but juice oozed every time I chewed it and the meat melted in seconds flat. Whatever it had been marinated in tasted of garlic and other spices and was absolutely divine, the sort of stuff you'd expect from an upscale restaurant. The leafy greens with the meat were a perfect duet, a bit of texture and freshness that clashed with the raw flavor of the steak, but in just the right way to not have one overpower the other. Between the two was a sauce, something spicy and savory but at the same time packed with a bit of subtle sweetness, balancing itself out perfectly. But the degree to which the bread outshined everything else in the sandwich was something it's difficult to accurately describe. The sourdough- at least, that's what it started as- crunched as I bit into it, but the inside was perfectly soft and malleable in my mouth, melding with the meat in flawless harmony. I tasted flecks of spice- rosemary and garlic- and it served to improve the flavor to the point where I wanted to sit down with a loaf and just gnaw at it until it was gone. "You are a god among men, Qarif," I said as I came back to reality.

Qarif, who had been watching my reaction, chuckled a satisfied chuckle and put one hand casually on the counter. "Tell that to my wife, maybe she'll listen to you."

We finished the food with light conversation interspersed throughout- I don't remember much of it, but to be fair, I was in sandwich heaven at the time. "What's the damage?" I asked as I stood up from the chair and fished in my back pocket for some money.

"No charge," Qarif said, his smile faultlessly friendly.

"Aw, don't do that," I said with a smile. I appreciated his gesture, but we'd done so many favors for each other that I'd long since lost track of the score and defaulted to 'I owe you one'. "Name your price."

"Well," he said slowly, really stretching the word out. "I wasn't going to bring this up, but…" He lowered his voice, glancing around quickly to make sure no one was listening in. The combination of the two was enough to set me on edge before he even finished speaking. "There's been trouble in the market the last couple of days. A pair of men have been coming around, talking about protecting us. I've seen them bullying Quan-chi and threatening to tear up his fabrics."

My expression went from friendly joy to sobering seriousness in a fraction of a second. "Describe them."

"I-It's not a major issue," he stammered, "I'm sorry I brought it up. Honestly, Vi, it doesn't-"

I cut him off when I slammed a fist into the counter getting up. My fingers clenched enough for my knuckles to whiten. Cop or not, I didn't tolerate bullies, whether criminal or child. Period. "Describe. Them." He did, and I nodded slowly, a grimace stretching my face. I had dealt with these guys before. Apparently they hadn't learned their lesson. "Alright," I said after he was done. "Watch Gnar for me, I'll handle this."

Before he could protest I left, returning to the crowd to find a good spot to look. Eventually I found it- a shaded corner overlooking most of the square, the kind of spot not many eyes would be drawn to. Perfect for what I was going to do. With anger slowly simmering inside of me, I stood at that corner and I waited. After about ten minutes I spotted them moving through the crowd. Two men, both the type of person I would have idolized years ago, which meant they were scum. One was short and stocky, built like an ox with its face bashed in, while the other was lanky, very tall, and had features whose shape brought to mind sharp edges and knives. I didn't know their names, but thanks to one man's overgrown facial hair and another's missing eye, I named them Scruffy and Patches in my head. Hey, my nicknames can't all be gold.

I moved from my spot into the crowd, weaving my way as quickly as I could until I reached the two. They were walking side by side, so I stepped up behind them and casually slapped a hand on each of their shoulders and spun them around (easy for Scruffy, not so much for tall ol' Patches). "Afternoon, gentlemen," I said with a smile. I watched the recognition dawn on their faces and grimaces set in place.

"Evening officer," Scruffy said to me, his voice like sandpaper. "Whatcha need?"

"A chat," I replied, my smile faultlessly friendly. Man, my poker face is good when I'm angry. "What say you gents come with me down that secluded alley and we have a short discussion about what you've been doing around here?"

They got the idea pretty quickly, which meant they also realized this probably wasn't official police business, which meant they didn't have to lie down and take it in the eyes of the law. The two looked at each other and I could see the gears turning- two of them, one of me. The odds were in their favor, right? I was sure they were thinking back to the last time we'd had words, and how they'd love to get their revenge, either by beating the hell out of me or… Well, point was, they thought they had a good chance of beating me. I let them keep thinking that.

I nodded in the direction of the alley and the two headed that way. I let my hands slide off of their shoulders- no reason to make it easy for them to elbow me in the gut- and followed closely behind, checking the crowd to make sure no one got curious about what we were doing. We headed down the alley in silence- well, I was silent, and that let me hear them whispering to each other. Strategizing. Doubt it would matter anyways- there's a reason I'm a goddamn League champ and it's not because I made a set of cool gloves.

We reached the end of the alley and I smiled at each of them, although before I knew it my smile had faded into a mask of rage. "So let's chat, boys. I hear talk that you two are trying to scare some of the merchants around here. Trying to get protection money from them. Trying to abuse them." I clenched my fists so hard that my knuckles popped. My voice was low, but shaking with anger and more importantly, pure and unfiltered hate. These guys were everything I could have become, every mistake I'd made times a thousand, and the worst part was that they loved what they did. No lawmaker on the face of Runeterra would take pity on them, and I sure as hell wouldn't either. "That's not gonna fly around here. You got anything to say for yourselves?"

Scruffy opened his mouth to speak, a bit of a smirk on his face, and I chose that moment to slam my left hook straight into his jaw. He stumbled backwards, taken off-guard. Patches, who had been paying attention and noticed my windup, took the initiative and swung at me, his arms lacking muscle but with an excess of reach. I ducked suddenly, my right hand reaching up so my fingers could latch onto his slender wrist, and used the motion of my duck to pull at him, twisting to my left until my back was to him and his forearm rested on my shoulder. Without warning I pulled as hard as I could, throwing my torso down towards the ground and letting physics work its magic. Patches tried to avoid being thrown, but I had predicted the punch too well, and he was too skinny to handle my strength. He flew over me and hit the ground hard, and I cocked back my left hand to dispatch him with a swift shot straight at his pointy nose.

I forgot about Scruffy. His fist slammed into the left side of my head, pushing me off of Patches and knocking me into the wall of the alley. It took me by surprise, and as a result it took me a bit to get my bearings again. I heard Scruffy's voice speaking. "You alright?" I heard a groan from Patches as he got to his feet, and then a chuckle from Scruffy. That wasn't good. I steadied my gaze on the two, scowling with hate. "Annoying little girl-" Patches began, but I lashed out with a hard kick to the shins before he could finish. I felt resistance and then a little bit of give as the bone cracked, and Patches screamed and stumbled backwards. Again the other one retaliated, and I pushed myself off of the wall with both hands and tumbled forward into a crouch, facing Scruffy with fire in my eyes.

The side of my face he hit me on was throbbing with hammerlike savagery, but I tried to shut it out long enough to take care of business. Scruffy growled and stomped towards me, arms outstretched to grab. I took a step back to get distance and when he went for the grab I pushed his arms aside, slamming a fist into his ribs as he passed. It didn't do much good. The stubborn bastard snarled and wheeled around, swinging his hand in a wild haymaker, but I sidestepped it, landing another left hook into his jaw. I could feel the bones in his face rattle, but the man kept coming. I took another step and felt my foot catch on something- as I looked down I saw Patches clawing at my boots, hissing violently with pain and fury. I tried to steady myself but didn't expect him to try to trip me up, and before I could regain my balance I hit the ground, landing on my side in an effort to keep from hitting my back. I scrambled to get to my feet but wasn't fast enough, and a steel-toed boot slammed into my side, knocking the breath from my lungs.

Lights popped into my vision as I coughed and sputtered, and I barely caught a glimpse of Scruffy winding up for another kick before it came. This time I grabbed at his foot, catching the blow in my arms and twisting as hard as I could until I faced him, my legs under me and my arms wrapped around his lower leg. I pressed my shoulder into his shin and pushed as hard as I could, and while he stomped his foot to the ground in an effort to prevent my force from unbalancing him, it had the opposite effect and made it a little easier for me. As he fell I felt clawing fingers grabbing at my legs again, and I glanced back to see Patches scrabbling towards me on the ground, spewing profanities with murder in his eyes. I grimaced and mule-kicked out with one foot, slamming it square into his face. I felt his nose crunch under my boot and his grip loosened, giving me the chance to scramble over to Scruffy before he could get to his feet.

"Goddamn-" Scruffy started, but I slammed a fist into his stomach and twisted it, knocking the breath out of him. I straddled his stomach and swung, landing blow after blow at his face and neck and twisting his head this way and that. Rage clouded my thoughts as I held the criminal at my mercy, and the blows sounded hollow and wet as blood coated my hands and the dirt around his twisting head. After losing count of how many times I'd hit him I stopped, my hands pulsing with ache and wet with blood. I could feel a few cuts on my knuckles from his teeth, one of which lay on the ground next to him. I paused for a moment, letting my chest heave with effort, and listened. I could hear wheezing breaths, accentuated by the occasional cough, which told me I hadn't gone too far, not that anyone would miss these scumbags if I hadn't. Behind me I heard Patches sputter, and his voice rose with angry, pained tremors.

"DAMN YOU!" he screamed, acid dripping from his words. "I'M GONNA KILL YOU, YOU BI-" he started, but I kicked at his stomach and the words turned into a fit of pained coughing. I knelt down in front of him, grabbing his face with one hand as I brought it within a few inches of mine.

"If I ever see you two in this town again," I said slowly and calmly, the exhaustion in my voice hidden under an ocean of boiling hatred, "There won't be enough of you left for a body bag." His eyes widened in fear and I let go, letting his head flop down into the dirt, his wide eyes staring at his incapacitated friend. I left the alley without looking back and stopped at the mouth, wincing as the adrenaline slowly began to fade and remind me of the damage I'd sustained. My stomach rolled, and I fought to keep the food down, and after a moment I felt in control of my bowels so I pushed myself off the wall and made my way back into the crowd.

About a minute later, I returned to Qarif's booth. "Problem's solved, Qarif." I said resolutely, but edged with exhaust and pain.

He looked at me and sighed. "Are you alright?"

I took stock of myself. I had taken a real good hit to the face, so I probably had a black eye growing on me, but other than that, some battered ribs, and reddening bruises and cuts on my knuckles, I had come away from it without anything broken or seriously damaged. "I'm fine," I said calmly. "The other guys, not so much."

"You're bleeding," he said as if it was the most obvious thing he had ever seen and I was completely oblivious.

I gave him a quizzical look and glanced down at my hands. "That's not mine."

Qarif shook his head and grabbed a small towel. "No, here," he said as he reached over and wiped at my forehead, just above the un-blackened eye. Pain flared up in the side of my face and I grunted shortly, but he wiped some more and drew away the towel, blotches of bright red staining it. I hadn't even felt a cut, let along the blood on my face. Must have happened when my head hit the wall of the alley, which meant the fight could have gotten much nastier.

"Thanks," I said, and looked down to Gnar. The yordle was still sitting in his seat, gnawing away at a large bone, pleasantly unaware of the world around him. "He hasn't caused any damage?"

"None physically," Qarif replied, a grin cutting through the sour mood in the air, "But the things he said about my mother…"

"Har har," I replied, "He doesn't even speak Common."

"You know, I noticed that," Qarif replied as he looked at the yordle. "I even tried an old Shuriman tongue. Whatever he speaks, it's either obscure or very old."

I frowned in thought. "Then it's good that we're taking him down to the Academy, figure out where he's from."

"The Academy?" Qarif asked, confused. "You mean you didn't hear? After the attack yesterday they closed up. A scientist stopped by and mentioned it, said they didn't want the 'best and brightest' all in one place if something like that creature came back."

My eyes widened, and when I realized what that meant I swore under my breath. "There goes that plan. Well, I'll figure something out." I picked up Gnar, still chewing happily on the bone, which seemed more difficult than usual due to his oversized lower teeth, and gave Qarif a short wave. "I'll stop by again sometime, okay?"

Qarif's smile grew back onto his face. "And it will be an absolute pleasure," he responded.

We made it back to my bike and I sat Gnar on the second seat, thinking about what we could do in the meantime. With the Academy closed, many of the yordles would be at home with their families, sequestered away in their labs, or both at the same time. Probably all of them, really. Except…

As an idea dawned on me I started the bike with a smile on my face, mapping out the route to my destination in my head. Thank the gods for hot rods.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Given that many League champions have gained some form of celebrity and notoriety through their competitions, it's no surprise that a lot of people think we spend most of our time between matches, well, training for matches. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Most champions have pastimes or hobbies that rival their League competitions, whether violent or otherwise, but some can be simply bizarre. Jax, the Grandmaster At Arms, is a known barfly, prone to showing up at pubs and drinking just about anyone under the table. Pantheon, the Artisan of War, has been known to dabble in bakery, as has a certain fallen angel. And Professor Cecil B. Heimerdinger, a revered inventor, founder of the Yordle Academy of Science and Progress, and League champion, also works in a mechanic shop customizing cars and hextech devices in his off-time. Given that the Academy was currently closed, I had a good chance of finding him there.

I parked the bike in the parking lot of a warehouse-sized shop, mostly brick and mortar but with signs of steel reinforcement here and there to keep the place from falling apart due to excessively awesome customizations made for some crazier customers. Next to the several garage doors was a smaller office doorway, with a large sign over it that read "Piltover Customs – For All Your Hextech Needs". One of the garage doors was open, and I revved the bike's engine as I parked it nearby the door. Inside I saw a strange-looking vehicle, its chassis looking like a construction rig, all blocky assembly and function over form. Unlike normal construction trucks, however, the wheels on this one were gigantic, larger than a man, and seemed designed exclusively to be huge. While crazy modifications were standard fare for the place, this one was new to me. I spotted a fluffy afro wobbling in one of the windows of the car and raised one hand to my mouth to amplify my voice. "RAISE 'EM, PROFESSOR!"

I heard a squeak of surprise- he must have been too wrapped up in his work to hear my bike- and a high-pitched voice responded "W-What!?" Professor Heimerdinger stuck his head out of the window and glared down at me before realization dawned on his face. "I've told you blasted adolescents, it's HeimerDINGER, not- o-oh, it's you, Vi! Salutations!" The yordle hopped out of the window despite it being ten or so feet off the ground, and before he could be in any sort of danger a robotic arm popped out of his hair, a small rocket at its end sputtering to life and slowing his descent until he touched down gracefully. "What brings you here?"

Heimerdinger looked like someone had put the brain of a genius scientist into the body of an afroed squirrel- he was average-sized for a yordle, but his hair gave him an extra six inches on most yordles, the yellow locks spiraling off of his head in a way that almost made it look like a fuzzy extension of his brain. His eyes were obscured by a pair of red-rimmed goggles, and his mouth was obscured by a fuzzy white mustache, the tips stained with black grease. He wore a dark labcoat, covered with more grease stains, and held a large red wrench in one hand, almost as large as his arm. "Additionally," he mentioned as I got off the bike, "Who is your acquaintance?"

I looked down at the passenger on my bike with a bit of a smile. Gnar had been comfortably asleep for most of the ride- he seemed to have adapted to the bike rather quickly- but when things slowed down he had perked back up, and once the bike stopped he hopped off the machine to greet the strange, afroed newcomer in his life. "Shooga wabo!" Gnar shouted as he scampered up to the yordle in greeting. Heimerdinger took a noticeable step away, probably because of the bone boomerang, but I followed and put a hand on Gnar's head to keep him from running off. "To answer both questions, this is Gnar- at least, that's what we guessed his name was. He doesn't exactly speak our language."

"And you were hoping I might be able to determine his origins," Heimerdinger supplied, "Or at the minimum, deduce his particular mental state."

"Something like that," I confirmed shortly. "I found him over in the Academic district. He doesn't act like a yordle, more like an animal. I've talked to a few people, and our best guess is that there's either tribal yordles around that we don't know about or he's older than he looks."

Heimerdinger squinted, which I was only aware of because of the way his bushy eyebrows narrowed, pressing harder against his goggles. Gnar seemed oblivious to his scrutiny, and his head twisted and turned as his large, dark eyes bounced around the shop, his legs idly rocking with energy. "This sort of analysis would be greatly expedited if I had access to my lab equipment," he said as if mentioning it would make the tools simply appear, "But no matter, I should be able to cobble together something serviceable with the tools around here. Perhaps I might be able to clear some of the obfuscation surrounding his nature. Please follow me," he said as he swiveled around and headed towards a door at the back of the garage, his hair wobbling in an amusing fashion out of sync with the movement of his head. I pushed gently at Gnar's head, and when he noticed the wobbling hair his mouth opened in a wide grin and he chased after Heimerdinger, playfully cooing his excitement.

The back room looked like equal parts chop shop and armory. Like my workshop, it was mostly utilitarian concrete and steel foundations, but the walls and floor were coated with a layer of mechanical gadgets, tools and parts, with carefully-cleared walkways separating each project. Heimerdinger led us to a large clear space in the middle of the room, inhabited only be a massive silver golem, whose legs had been replaced with white-walled wheels and large exhaust pipes jutting out of his back. At the sound of one of Gnar's squeals the golem turned around, casting its robotic gaze on Heimerdinger and me in turn. "GREETINGS, PROFESSOR," the robot droned with an exceptionally loud voice, "AND GREETINGS, OFFICER VI. IF YOU POSSESS A WARRANT YOU WILL FIND THAT OUR SPECIFICATIONS ARE UP TO CODE-"

"Unofficial business, Blitzcrank," I interrupted, my hand lazily waving away his words, "It's good to see you."

"I UNDERSTAND," Blitzcrank the golem replied, a puff of steam escaping one of the exhaust vents. "HAVE YOU RETURNED FOR A REMATCH?"

My blood momentarily boiled- Blitzcrank, for all of his robotic strength, held the current World Heavyweight boxing title. A title I rightfully deserved. I'd fought him once, but damnit if the golem hadn't earned his spot at the top. I hadn't been ready for him. But now wasn't the time for rivalries. I'd have to punch his lights out later. "Not this time," I said, trying to brush off the challenge like it wasn't the very large deal that it certainly was. "Business with the 'dinger." I saw Heimerdinger's head spin in my direction momentarily- he hated being called that- but he ignored us and went back to fiddling through boxes for various techmaturgical doohickeys. "Where's Corki?" I asked, referring to the other owner of the shop, another yordle and League champion.

"AS PROFESSOR HEIMERDINGER WAS UNABLE TO ENTER THE ACADEMY TODAY," Blitzcrank blared mechanically, "HE CHOSE TO RELIEVE CORKI FOR THE DAY AND TAKE UP RESIDENCE WITHIN THE SHOP. CORKI HAS RETURNED HOME FOR THE DAY, AND HAS REQUESTED HE BE LEFT ALONE TO WAX HIS MUSTACHE IN PRIVACY."

"Don't think I needed that last part," I commented, trying not to laugh at the idea of the little yordle waxing a handlebar mustache almost as large as himself. "But thanks."

"I WILL LEAVE YOU TO YOUR BUSINESS," the golem boomed as his wheels spun him in a circle. "HAVE A SUFFICIENTLY ENJOYABLE DAY, FLESHBAG."

I raised an eyebrow at the comment as the golem wheeled out, but the strangeness of the farewell wasn't out of the ordinary. Blitzcrank was another League champion, and also one of the only machines to achieve true sentience, which made him something else entirely. That having been said he was far from perfect and struggled to grasp human mannerisms and customs, as his attempts to create a dating service had proven some time ago. I sighed and turned back to Heimerdinger, and as I did my raised eyebrow found its couple on the other side of my face thanks to my sudden surprise. "Uh, Heimy?" I asked slowly, "What the hell is that?"

Heimerdinger looked up at me from a control panel he was hunched over, a control panel attached to a console easily twice his size, reaching my forehead in height. What was surprising about it wasn't its size, it's that it didn't exist a minute ago. I could see signs of construction here and there, but for the most part the machine seemed to have been willed into existence, he'd made it so fast. I almost thought a saw a glimmer of pride through his goggles, and he took a moment to adjust them with a harrumph of indignation. "If you had not been conversing with the steam golem, perhaps you would have listened to my concise and elucidating explanation," he protested.

"Sorry, sorry," I said, my hands held in an appeasing gesture. "Give me the short version?"

He sighed and gestured to the machine with his wrench. "It's a functional replica of one of my supercomputers housed within the Academy," he explained, punching in a few keys as he spoke. He reached into a pocket and produced a tape measure, which he extended and pressed against the side of Gnar's head. Gnar protested with a soft squeal but stayed put. "By designing it to feed off of the same techmaturgic signature, I should be able to approximate a live connection to the full device, granting me limited access to the Academy database. We have some historic records available from the Libraries, which makes it simple to take measurements of this Gnar fellow and search within the system for correlations and possible geological or chronological origins!"

I sighed. I caught… some of that. I knew machines fairly well, but my knowledge was closer to the "vehicle, weapon and punching implement" specializations than any sort of techmaturgic approximation whoza-whatsits. "Uh, neat," I said, trying to pretend like I had understood him.

Heimerdinger sighed, clearly aware of how lost I was. "I can use this to gain information on this fellow," he explained as he turned to enter information into the machine. Gnar, clearly intrigued by the fuzzy person next to him with the wavy hair, stepped a bit closer and prodded at his hair with the boomerang. A robotic arm, the same one that had helped him jump out of the truck, popped out of his hair and snatched the boomerang away. "Please do not do that," Heimerdinger said as Gnar responded with a yelp of equal parts surprise and 'hey, gimme that' indignation. The arm dropped the boomerang on the floor and Gnar scooped it up, which served to be a sufficient distraction for Heimerdinger to jab the smaller yordle with a thin needle, drawing a small bit of blood into the reservoir. The yordle yelped again, this time in pain, and hopped away from Heimerdinger, who paid him no mind.

"Now then," he said with an air of seriousness, "While the hemoglobin sample is analyzed and compared with samples kept in the Academy's database, let's discuss the yordle and his important mannerisms and traits. Have you observed his eating habits?"

I grinned. "Y'ever seen Ziggs go after a cupcake?"

Heimerdinger glowered. "So you're implying he feeds like a wild animal, with no signs of sanitation or etiquette."

I nodded. "Precisely."

The professor produced a small clipboard and scribbled a few notes down. "I see. Diet?"

I scratched one arm. "Well, I fed him a steak sandwich and he's not dead yet. So… grains, meat, veggies?"

"Omnivorous," Heimerdinger supplied, and I snapped my fingers.

"Yeah," I confirmed, "That thing."

"Right," he mumbled while scribbling some more notes. "Any observed predators? Prey? Signs of a place in a hierarchy?"

"I don't think he liked my bike," I supplied, shrugging.

"Interesting, perhaps signs of a lack of acclimation to hextech and machinery," he responded, "I have a theory, but let's analyze the results of the test before we come to any definite conclusions to assure the highest possible percentile of accuracy. With that out of the way, let's discuss the nature and extent of your injuries."

I blinked, and it made part of my face throb. "Huh?"

He set the clipboard down on the machine, whose screen was filling with data faster than it could be read. "Your orbicularis oculi muscles around your left eye have been bruised and show signs of periorbital hematoma."

"…Huh?"

"You're getting a black eye," he repeated, as if talking to a child.

I touched a hand to my face again. "I could really use a mirror…" The robotic arm in Heimerdinger's hair popped out, producing a small handheld mirror. I raised an eyebrow and mumbled "I'm not even going to ask where you got that" before taking it from the arm and inspecting my face. I looked like a wreck- the muscle under and around my left eye was purpling pretty badly, and there was a dark red line of dried blood where I had cut the right side of my forehead on the wall of the alley. I could see signs of a busted lip as well. "Well, that's not as bad as I thought."

"The sheriff will undoubtedly question you as to the cause of the injuries," he commented. "I would hope you don't mention you were here in the process."

I blinked and looked down at him. "Whyzat?"

"Because I don't want to get caught in the crossfire," he stated plainly. "I have witnessed her behavior when made furious. It was terrifying, to say the least."

I gulped down a nervous breath. Heimerdinger had a point- if Caitlyn found out, she'd be pissed. Problem was, I couldn't exactly lie to her. Whether someone told her or not, she'd investigate and find out. Lying to her was just borrowing a shovel so I could dig my own grave. Crap.

Before I could dwell too much on the problem ahead of me, the machine the yordle had built beeped twice. Heimerdinger's expression grew warmer and he bounced over to the machine. "Excellent! The sample has been analyzed!" I walked over to look and quickly realized I couldn't make hide nor hair of the results. The professor, already aware of my confusion, pointed out a structure of linked letters on the screen. "This is the structure of this Gnar's blood. As you can plainly see, the hemoglobin is especially saturated, taking up a larger portion of his blood cell makeup and allowing the passage of more oxygen into the system. It's not common among yordles, considering that our circulatory systems have less overall distance to travel, but would allow for improved blood circulation in situations where the system has been compromised."

I tried to find a facial expression that accurately conveyed my confusion, but Heimerdinger didn't seem to notice. With a few pushes of a button, he brought up a different screen, this one showing a series of X-like shapes, each numbered just below it. "Here we have a readout of his genetic structure, or a rough estimate from the blood sample. A few notable genes are three, twelve, and fifteen," he said with a pointing finger directed at each one in turn, "And most notably, gene twenty. Given the shape of this gene is markedly different from our standard yordle genome-" he tapped a button and a near-duplicate set of whatever he was talking about popped up underneath the ones from before. The two sets looked almost identical, with the exclusion of the ones he had pointed out. Number twenty, like he said, looked wildly different, almost unrecognizable.

"I see that they're different," I said, trying my hardest to sound smart, "But… what?"

Heimerdinger's 'how are you not getting this' sigh was getting seriously annoying. "I apologize, I did not realize you hadn't read Professor Firkledink's journal on yordle genome theory. We believe this twentieth gene is responsible for development in the limbic system, the parts of the brain responsible for emotional management. It's possible that your friend has an underdeveloped brain, or, judging by this readout, a mutation entirely separate from the standard yordle evolutionary line."

"Evolutionary line?" I asked.

"Correct," he said, even though I had asked a question, not answered it. "According to the dating algorithms we use at the Academy to identify fossils brought in by Ezreal and his ilk, this yordle's blood sample is… approximately four years old. However, pieces of the boomerang fashioned from animal bone date back to a species that went extinct over a thousand years ago, with a margin for error of course." He looked over at Gnar, who was busy poking at the hubcaps on a car. "It appears that… Gnar, you said? That Gnar is a living prehistoric yordle."

I sighed. It was one thing to have the funny idea that you were walking around with a caveman, it was another entirely to actually be walking around with a friggin' caveman…yordle…thing. Awesome. Explaining this all to Caitlyn would be fun. "Fantastic," I said with a sigh, stepping away from the machine as I turned my attention to Gnar, who had his boomerang wedged into the hubcap at this point and was trying to pry it off. "And I assume you can't take care of him for me? We can't really keep him at home forever."

"Heavens no," Heimerdinger said, still looking at his monitor. "While I would adore the opportunity to study him more deeply, that would require surgery or a dissection, neither of which I could readily perform in the midst of hot rods and steam golems." He heard the snap of the hubcap falling off and whirled around with surprise. "Hey! Stop that!"

I smiled a bit, then walked over to Gnar and picked him up. With the boomerang removed the hubcap fell off of its wheel, rattling as it wobbled to stillness on the floor. Heimerdinger rushed over and had it back in place in a matter of seconds, then looked up at me and the prehistoric yordle in my hands and huffed indignantly, a gesture that made his mustache wiggle in a hilariously cute fashion. "Bring him by when the Academy opens, and we may be able to find a place for him. If that is the end of your need for me, I have important work to get back to."

I headed for the door, and the professor followed. "What, that huge truck in the front?"

His eyes did that gleam again. "Exactly! I call it a mega truck!"

I shrugged. "I dunno, could sound cooler. Why not a monster truck?"

He shot me a quizzical look. "Why on Runeterra would I call it that?"

"It's monstrously big?" I supplied.

Heimerdinger mumbled something under his breath. "You may be on to something there."

"Of course," I said as I plopped Gnar down on the bike and stretched one leg over to the opposite side. "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's punching. If there's another, it's awesome names for stuff."

"Quite," he responded dismissively, "Farewell then, Vi."

"Seeya, Heimy," I said jokingly as the bike roared to life and I peeled off into the fading daylight.

By the time I got home, night had fallen on the city. Gnar seemed content to sit on the back seat and let the vibrations of the bike lull him to sleep, and given that he wasn't trying to leap off and sniff something when he was asleep, I didn't mind either. I stopped at the gate to the house and pressed the intercom button. "Yo, it's Vi," I said into the microphone, and after a moment a voice crackled to life.

"About time you made it home," Caitlyn responded through the intercom, "How is our little friend at the Academy?"

"Uh, it's complicated," I said nervously. "I'll tell you when I get in." There was no response, but the door clicked open and I got in and parked the bike. My mind raced as I walked to the front door. I had to say something in order to distract her, to take her attention off of my injuries. I'd thought about stories I could tell on the way home, but nothing stuck. She'd find out one way or another, of that I was certain. The least I could do would be to tell her upfront and take the trouble now instead of letting it fester. But, if I could bombard her with info about Gnar's true nature and get her thinking about that, there was a possibility she'd let the injury slide as "just another Vi thing." It had happened before, it was worth a shot.

I got to the front door and saw Caitlyn there, waiting for me. She immediately noticed Gnar and shot me a look that said I had some explaining to do. However, when she shot me the look, she noticed my face, and her curiosity visibly redoubled. "Heya Cait," I said when she was in earshot, still walking towards the door. "So the Academy was closed, but I managed to run into Heimerdinger over at Piltover Customs, and-"

Caitlyn raised a hand, a simple gesture of pause, but the absolute authority with which she did it made the words catch in my mouth. "You're bruised up," she said shortly. "Tell me what happened."

"Cait, it's not a big deal," I started, but the look in her eyes said she wanted to know anyways. I sighed in defeat and nodded. "Let's go inside. I'll tell you." Guilt and defeat mixed in my head until I couldn't tell the difference anymore. I couldn't lie to her, I couldn't hide it from her and I couldn't try to divert her attention.

This night was about to get a whole lot worse.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

"You've gone the whole day without icing it?" Caitlyn asked with an expression that was fifty percent worry and fifty percent annoyance. Okay, maybe closer to 40-60. Or 30-70. Yeah, that seems more accurate.

"It didn't hurt," I complained as she pushed at my shoulder, forcing me to sit down on the comfortable couch in her study. "I'm a big girl, Cait, I can take a little swelling."

Caitlyn clicked her tongue disapprovingly and pressed a bag of ice to the side of my face. "You're a human being. When you get hurt, you need to recover. Don't try to just shrug it off like a golem. Hold the bag," she said, not quite an order but far from a suggestion. I held onto it with one reluctant hand as she went into another room. Gnar hopped up on the seat next to me and began sniffing at the bag of ice, and it brought a bit of a smile to my face.

Caitlyn returned and immediately shot a glare at the yordle, like he was a bad dog getting hair on the furniture. "Hey!" she said firmly. "Get down from there!" The yordle didn't seem to get the memo, so I picked him up and placed him down on the ground, where he gave me a confused look, chattered some prehistoric yordle version of 'hey what gives', and set himself to work sniffing about the room. Caitlyn sat down again and placed a red first aid kit on the table next to her. As she got a small towel wet with antiseptic she looked from the bruises to the cut on my head and sighed. "That's probably infected," she commented softly, and began to touch the towel to the cut. Stinging pain shot through the side of my head and I grimaced, sucking in a breath from the sudden fire spreading from the cut. Caitlyn smiled and laughed softly. "Big baby," she chided.

Once the cut was disinfected she applied a small bandage, and with a sigh of relief, turned to cleaning the smaller, less-dangerous cuts on my hands. "Now then," she said as she wiped at my knuckles, "Tell me what happened. And I mean the truth, Vi," she added as I started to open my mouth, "Not some story."

I shot her a scowl, something I'd been prepping, and told her everything. The whole time Caitlyn remained quiet, save for the occasional 'mm-hmm' or 'I see', and to my surprise, she didn't show a hint of anger. It was actually… kind of nice. After the initial sting of the antiseptic, my battered knuckles fell into a sort of numb haze, and it felt nicer than I would have guessed. I leaned back in the chair, my eyes on the ceiling as I explained the problem at the merchant's market, the fight and what had happened to get me so roughed up. "…And that's it," I finished after what must have been a good five minutes.

"I see," Caitlyn said, her tone one of absolute calm. "Then I'm afraid I have no choice."

"Huh?" I said as I let my eyes fall down from the ceiling onto Caitlyn, who had just finished cuffing my hands together.

The mood in the room went from zero to fight in a split second.

"What the hell, Cait?!" I shouted, raising my hands like the cuffs were an illusion I was trying to break through scrutiny. I looked past the cuffs at Caitlyn just in time to watch her calmness melt in a sea of bubbling rage. Oh… crap.

"You're telling me…" she said slowly, her calm voice a façade that was quickly crumbling into barely-contained anger, "You beat a couple of men halfway to death's door and left them there, all on the word of one man?" She clenched her fists, and I could see her knuckles turn white. "Do you have any idea how many lines you've crossed? Any idea what they could legally do to you?"

"They were shaking down-" I started, but I found myself quickly interrupted when Caitlyn slapped me across the face, right across my bruises. Pain flared up, harder than I had anticipated, and I grunted as my neck twisted sideways in recoil.

"Words, Vi," she said sternly. "They were just words. Threats are one thing, it's another thing entirely to leave them bleeding on the street. If a merchant is threatened, they talk to the police. If you happen to be a police officer, which is unfortunately the case, you follow the rules when reprimanding them. You don't arrest them, you don't book them and you certainly don't beat the teeth out of them. Do you even know the meaning of the word 'restraint', or are you just a thug like the rest of them?!"

The words stung worse than my injuries. "I'm not a thug," I spat, venom in my voice as apprehension and surprise turned to anger in my gut. "I'm nothing like them."

"Is that so?" Caitlyn asked aggressively, standing up to take a few steps away. "And what makes you so different from criminals like them? Why shouldn't I drag you down to the precinct, book you in front of everyone who takes orders from you and throw you in a cell?"

My eyes narrowed, my voice edged with ice. "I let them live."

Caitlyn responded in kind. "That isn't enough, Vi. That isn't nearly enough."

Gnar, who had been sniffing around the room throughout the conversation, seemed to feed off of the energy in the room. He ran between us, chittering away in high-pitched babble.

"Let me go, Cait!" I protested, my voice rising over Gnar's. "This isn't right!"

"Oh, so you _can_ tell right from wrong," she countered, her voice almost a shout at this point, "Then tell me, exactly what was right about beating a man within an inch of his life!"

"I was sending a message!"

"You were breaking the law!"

Again the yordle waddled between us, waving his boomerang in the air and chanting wildly. Her anger boiling over, Caitlyn swore loudly at the yordle, then snatched the boomerang and chucked it at the window. Glass shattered with an ear-splitting crash, and Gnar squealed with surprise and dove for the window. Even before his blue-tipped tail passed out of sight, Caitlyn had turned her focus back to me.

"I cannot believe," Caitlyn continued, oblivious to the sounds of the yordle scuffling outside, "I cannot BELIEVE that after this much time you still undermine everything you've worked so hard for."

"I'm not underminding a freaking thing," I responded, my words full of vitriol, "I'm protecting the public. If you weren't so spun up in your freaking rules, maybe you'd notice that!"

"Don't you dare pass off what you did as lawful," Caitlyn spat, "I'd sooner have your badge than approve of your methods."

"Take it," I said as I rose to my feet, my cuffed hands balled into fists. "I don't need your goddamn law. I'll do this myself."

Caitlyn reached back to the desk behind her and drew a pistol from the drawer, a weapon I'd seen her use more than once in close quarters. She wouldn't miss at this distance. I didn't care. "_Sit down_, Vi," she said, her words filled with a tone of absolute, utter authority.

My lips split in a devil's wild grin. "_Make me_, Cupcake."

Our standoff was halted by the sound of a roar splitting the night air, like a massive beast had erupted from the ground out of the middle of nowhere. Its steps shook the ground, making the books in Caitlyn's study rattle on their shelves. Caitlyn moved past me to the broken window, just in time to hear the beast howl again. The sound of its voice sounded strangely familiar, but it took me a moment to figure it out. Then I remembered- Heimerdinger's mention of the mutated gene, the strange blood signature.

"It's Gnar," I said softly, and Caitlyn looked from the window to me. "Cait, that thing is Gnar. …Get these cuffs off me. _Right now_."

Caitlyn opened her mouth to protest, but the sound of a blaring horn cut her off, which seemed to grow louder the longer it sounded. The weirdest part was that it sounded like the horn of my… bike…

"CAIT, GET DOWN!"

The bike slammed into the window with the force of a wrecking ball, splintering the bookshelf next to it and sending books and bits of drywall flying. I had taken a step forward towards Caitlyn, but the force of the impact threw me to the floor. I recovered quickly, spitting dust from my mouth as I pushed myself to my feet, but I froze for a second as I saw the hole left by the bike.

My bike had landed halfway through the room, embedded in the couch an inch from where I had been sitting. Its frame was warped, the chassis crushed and bent inward as if it had been made of paper in a toddler's hands. The horn warbled drunkenly as one wheel spun off-center, getting progressively quieter and quieter as it died out. But what made me freeze in ice-cold fear wasn't the condition of my bike, it was the condition of the limp body lying in the corner, her leg pinned under the overturned bookcase. I crossed the room as quickly as my legs could manage, fear making my heart pound like it was trying to burst out of my chest.

"Cait, wake up," I pleaded as I checked her for any injuries. Her left leg was trapped and I saw a large cut on one arm, but she seemed otherwise intact. More importantly, she was still breathing. I pulled at the bookcase, desperation making my arms scream with the strain, but it was too heavy to be moved. A curse left my lips as I slapped Caitlyn lightly across the face, but she showed no signs of waking up. I had no choice- I raced to the desk and found the key to the cuffs, and before they were off my wrists I was running down to my workshop. I passed Bradford on the way down, and he looked to me with confusion and abject terror on his face.

"What in the world is going on?!" Jeeves cried, his voice a bit too high-pitched thanks to his panic. Outside I heard another enraged roar, and Jeeves squeaked with fear as the ground shook again.

"Cait's in her study," I said as I ran past, "Get to her and try to wake her up. I'll be back." He looked like he wanted to ask questions, but I shot him a glare that said I didn't have time to answer them. "Now, Bradford! She's hurt!"

I saw him scurry away as I bounded down the stairs into the workshop, where my gauntlets lay on the wall. I suited up as fast as possible, throwing the pack onto my back and flicking it on even as the cuffs fell to the floor. The gauntlets felt like ten-ton weights for a second and then whirred to life, becoming increasingly lighter until it was like I wasn't wearing anything at all. Thoughts raced through my head faster than I could process them as the systems in the gauntlets powered on; anger left over from the argument and Caitlyn's actions, surprise at Gnar's transformation, and overpowering everything else was fear, a terror that shook me to the core that Caitlyn might not make it out of this, and that it was my fault she was hurt. That was something I couldn't let happen. Not now, not ever.

Without a moment's hesitation I sprinted back to the study, taking the stairs up to the second floor three at a time until I had reached Caitlyn, who was awake thanks to Jeeves but was still pinned to the floor. "She's not bleeding," Jeeves reported as I stormed into the room, "But her leg looks bad. R-Really bad. Oh stars…"

"Cait," I said as I got to her, one armored finger propping up her head, "You with me, Cupcake?" My voice wavered with barely-contained fear. Caitlyn stirred, her eyes fluttering weakly, and she tried to speak only to offer a pained whimper. "It's okay, I've got this," I said to her, trying to comfort myself as much as I was trying to comfort her. "I'm gonna get your leg unstuck, and then I've gotta go."

I changed my focus from Caitlyn to the bookcase, and forced my fear and panic to turn to iron in my gut. No time for freaking out, Vi. Caitlyn's hurt and help is nowhere near. It's on you. I wedged my metal fingertips underneath the bookcase and pulled, and the servos is my pack whirred to life, adjusting the power output to my gloves to allow me to lift the heavy bookcase and heave it over, where it landed with a heavy thud on its back, safely away from the others. Caitlyn screamed with pain as the weight left her leg, and as the scream died in her throat she quieted down, ragged breaths leaving her mouth in a pained rhythm. With the weight off of Caitlyn's leg I could get a good look at it, and I almost wished I hadn't. The leg was bent in a strange direction, part of the shin jutting out at an unnatural angle. It was clearly broken, although I couldn't judge the extent right now.

"Bradford," I snapped at Jeeves, my mind racing to find a solution to handle the situation, "Where's June?"

Jeeves frowned in panicked concentration, trying to remember where the other servant of the house had been. "Last I checked, she was in the kitchens, Miss Vi."

"Get her and bring her to Cait, she'll know what to do. Get a line to the precinct; we need a Jinx-threat-level response team down here. I'll stall it so it doesn't get out into the city."

Gnar snarled again outside, and I felt the heavy collision of its body into the house. The foundations shook, and while I was able to keep my balance, Jeeves toppled over. A few books fell off the shelves, and I heard the sound of glass shattering in another room down the hall added punctuation to the impact. "Y-You're gonna fight that thing?!" Jeeves stammered.

"If he gets out into the city, people could get hurt," I said with a stern face as I headed down the stairs into the foyer. "I can't let that happen."

I got to the foyer in seconds flat, and saw the beast that was once a little adorable yordle for the first time. There's wasn't much similarity between then and now. The Gnar I knew, an orange little ball of fuzz and energy, was gone, transformed into a red-furred beast that looked like equal parts gorilla, yordle and Freljordian giant boar. Its hands were the size of both of my gauntlets put together, and its normally-huge black eyes were small and yellow, contorted in an expression of absolute rage. Its mouth was large enough to swallow me whole, with teeth the size of knives paling in comparison to the two gigantic tusks that grew from the canines of its lower lip. A small bird skull, the same skull that was big enough for little Gnar to wear as a hat, was barely visible on the top of its head, and his arched back scraped at the ceiling, peeling away bits of paint and crushing the light feature in the center of the room with his sheer girth.

Gnar hadn't noticed me just yet, and was preoccupied with bashing the hell out of everything around him. Every time he hit a wall he made the house shudder, and I knew I couldn't fight him here for fear of one of us taking out a load bearing wall, sending the building toppling down with everyone inside. "HEY!" I shouted, cocking one fist behind me as the gears in the gauntlet began a slow whir, increasing in tempo as it charged. It began to emanate a soft blue light that grew in intensity until it drew Gnar's attention to me, and in that second I almost wished it hadn't. When those yellow eyes focused on me, exclusively on me, some part of my brain that hadn't been active since my ancestors' ancestors were creating fire suddenly shot to the forefront, overloading any rational thought I had with a primal, instinctive fear. I had faced down bladed horrors designed to be living nightmares and seen visions of my own death due to Void-borne magic, I had fought apex predators and unstoppable animations of the very force of nature itself, and none of those compared to the feeling of bone-shaking dread I felt when Gnar laid his primitive, furious eyes on me.

I steeled myself against the fear, let it turn to fire in my belly, and did the one thing I could do to keep myself from falling apart- I got mad.

"You jerk, I liked that bike!"

Gnar roared, a sound that slammed into my ears like a sledgehammer, and I howled with rage in return. My charging fist shook with the built-up energy, and as I met his cry I took a step forward, then another, one after the other until I was in a dead sprint, hurtling towards the most terrifyingly massive thing I had ever faced down. And I punched him straight in his god damned face. The discharge from my gauntlet let off an explosion of force, sending a shockwave rippling through the air. The design of the gauntlet instantly mitigated the force that would have ripped through my body and turned my bones to powder, and instead converted that kinetic energy into outward force. The desired effect was to send the beast flying, preferably out into the courtyard of the house. It had the desired effect.

The beast landed with an earth-shaking tremor, and left a hole in the front of the house the size of a small house itself. As I stepped through the hole I got a good look at the courtyard where Gnar had been raging, and quickly realized that it didn't really qualify as a courtyard anymore. The place looked like a warzone, with Gnar-fist-sized craters littering the normally well-kept grass and trees uprooted and left to lie on the ground like discarded twigs, massive swaths of missing dirt where they had been rooted sturdily into the ground for decades. Anything man-made had been destroyed, and pieces of plaster, marble and porcelain lay strewn across the ground, mere rubble compared to the depth of the destruction. Gnar made it back to his feet frighteningly fast, his eyes laser-focused on me as he snarled with anger and charged.

The ground rumbled as he strode forward, each step displacing a mound of dirt the size of my torso and making my legs tremble with aftershock. I clenched my fists within the gauntlets, triggering a built-in defense mechanism that sent a signal back to the pack on my back. I didn't have much of a knack for hextech variety, but I had specialized to the point of mastery. The pack on my back began to hum and emit a blue light, and I felt the air around me electrify, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and my forearms within the gloves erupt into goosebumps. The air around me hardened, forming a shield of pure kinetic force, designed with the exclusive purpose of preventing just about anything coming my way from landing. I knew it was a good shield- a damned good shield- but it was a brief defense, and I had no idea how well it would stand up to a hit from this guy. No better time to field test, right?

Gnar's fist slammed into the shield with the force of a warhead, and even when I braced I still felt the impact make my bones rattle. The hardened air erupted into blue-white light with a deafening thundercrack, converting the kinetic energy into light and sound almost instantaneously. Despite the insane strength of the monster, the shield held, but I knew it wouldn't last long enough for round two. Seemingly confused by the sudden flashbang effect its attack had had, Gnar paused just long enough for me to drop the shield and get my legs functioning again. I took steps to the side, trying to get between him and the house, when he dug his fingers into the ground and threw- literally threw the land out from under me.

I lost track of everything, dipping into blackness, and came to my senses what must have been only a few moments later. My mind swam in a haze of pain and terror, and I was only dimly aware that I had been chucked into the side of the house by the searing agony in my back. I felt blood and saw a large piece of rebar jutting out from my side, the color red slicking the ribbed surface of the metal. My unfocused eyes struggled to follow the jagged tip of the metal down to its base, and it took me a second to realize that while the rebar had cut into my side, it hadn't penetrated, just grazed the skin. An inch to the left…

I heard a roar and felt the world darken around me, and only slowly became aware of the fact that I was laying in a shadow. Gnar towered over me, one arm raised to strike, and I felt my eyes close in pain and exhaustion, fear giving way to an ocean of fatigue. I heard the wind whistle as his massive arm swung down, but I didn't have the strength to get up and avoid the blow, and my shield was out of commission. I was up the creek, and I knew it.

The loud crack of a rifle tore my eyes open in time to see the fist twist in midair, slamming down inches from me into the earth. I felt the impact shake me to the core, but it had missed all the same. I looked to the side, where I had heard the gunshot, and saw Caitlyn leaning out of the bike-sized hole in the side of the house, her rifle visibly shaking in her hands even from here. The girl was a hell of a shot. Gnar's focus abruptly left me and it spun, stomping towards the other side of the courtyard where the uprooted trees lay dying. I realized what was happening even as Caitlyn fired off another round, which landed in the massive yordle's flank but did little to slow him down.

With every muscle in my body screaming in protest I heaved myself to my feet, crying out in pain as the rebar cut into my side. It was bleeding badly, but I had bigger, furrier problems. I activated another mechanism in my gauntlets, causing them to vibrate and parts to shift to allow faster movement. A small lens jutted from one knuckle, and steam erupted from the exhaust vents at the base of each gauntlet as they let off pressure. I should have used this sooner, but I didn't have much choice at this point- it was this or Caitlyn got hurt, possibly killed. Not an option.

By the time I was ready I saw Gnar grab a tree, pieces splintering off of it around his iron grip, and hurl it through the air like a boulder towards Caitlyn. I raised my gauntlet as quickly as I could and a red laser shot from the exposed lens, tagging the airborne projectile with pinch-perfect aim. My arms and legs moved almost on their own, faster and harder than should have been possible, and I raced across the grass as if magnetically drawn to the old tree, the laser tether growing shorter and shorter as I closed the distance. I bent my legs and leapt, higher than a human being is capable of, the pack on my back whirring with a high-pitched whine as it overclocked just about everything to break every law of physics hextech could. I slammed into the tree from a side angle with the force of a freight train, smashing it cleanly in two and sending it spinning in midair, far off-course so that it crashed into the ground next to the house.

I landed harder than I should have, and my overburdened muscles couldn't hold me up through the landing. I collapsed in a heap, crying out in pain as my gauntlets hit the earth like Gnar's fists and sent the shockwave rippling through my body. I should have been out of gas, but there was still more fight to do. I couldn't stop here, despite every ounce of energy being spent. I planted one hextech fist in the earth, using it as leverage to heave myself up, and turned my wavering gaze to Gnar, who had lost track of myself and Caitlyn in return for focus on the sirens slowly growing louder in the night air. The response team was coming. It had been a gut reaction to call them, and a bad one- he'd tear them apart.

I checked the gauges on my gauntlets. No juice. They'd still work, but that meant no charged punches, no shield to save my sorry ass, nothing but metal and momentum. It took a second for the wheels to get back to spinning in my head, but when they did, they brought to mind a plan. It was a plan so crazy that it'd get me killed if it backfired (even super-killed, if that was a thing), but if it worked, we might have had a chance of making it out in one piece. "Cait!" I shouted up to her, "Stay down but stay ready! I'm gonna try something really stupid!"

I didn't hear a response, until Jeeves' terrified voice rang out, "M-MISS CAITLYN SAYS YOU'RE A STUBBORN IDIOT, A-AND YOU'LL NEVER LEARN, AND ALSO G-GOOD LUCK!"

Well, hell, that was just what I needed to hear. A manic smile split my face, a happiness borne of being beaten to the brink and seeing a spark of hope. Lights grew bright around the courtyard as droves of police swarmed the street in front of the house, many more than was normally needed for just about anyone that hadn't given their minigun bunny ears and pink paint. Gnar howled in primal rage at the newcomers, but was too confused by their lights and sounds to attack right away. I had my window.

I ran up behind the great beast, opting not to use a loud battlecry of any sorts in the name of 'stealth', and used what strength was left in my legs to throw myself at Gnar's massive back, grabbing hold of as much fur as I could within the hands of my giant gauntlets as the beast took notice and bucked, shaking me as hard as it could in an attempt to shake me off of his back. I grimaced as the violent shaking ripped the gash in my side open further and did the stupidest, most brilliant thing I could possibly do in this very dire situation: I turned my gauntlets off.

The hextech machinery powered down, and I almost immediately felt the gauntlets quintuple in weight, pressing in on my hands like a vice. It felt like agony, especially with the great beast thrashing about to jar me loose, but it had the intended effect- now deactivated, the gauntlets were immovably locked into position, which led me to phase 2 of my master plan.

"Yippie-ki-YAY!" I screamed in insane joy as Gnar bounded across the courtyard, leaping and rolling and doing everything he could to get me off, all futile (but still very painful). I felt like my arms were going to rip right out of their sockets, or like the pack on my back was going to peel off and take my spine out with it, but fortunately whoever put my bones together didn't cut corners, and I held myself together as I slowly felt the beast losing steam, his movements growing sluggish and strained. He roared again, and while it was still a low bellow of rage, it held with that rage a noticeable note of desperation, of exhaustion. I felt the body underneath me ripple, tremble with sudden anatomical shifts, and the dark red hair began to lighten and turn a bright orange as the gigantic creature beneath me shrunk, becoming smaller and smaller until I felt my legs and the rest of my body touch cool earth.

My arms lay outstretched before me, a few ripped-out tufts of fur still dark red but the rest had vanished. I strained to see through the fingers of the impossibly-heavy gauntlets and caught a glimpse of a small orange ball of fluff within my hands, its tiny body shaking with tired breaths. An exhausted smile split my face in a way that made my black eye throb, and I heard the sounds of policemen's footsteps race across the grass towards me. "Ma'am!" one shouted once he was within earshot, "Are you alright?"

"Peachy-freakin'-keen," I responded sarcastically, although the humor was ruined a bit with how my voice trembled with pain and exhaustion. "Could one of you gents take my hands off?"

I was dimly aware of Jeeves' voice saying something about injuries, medics, and cleaning, but when I tried to open my mouth to respond, the muscles of my face collectively unionized and refused to cooperate. The cool ground cushioned the injured side of my face like a pillow given what it had been through lately, and it was enough to convince my brain that passing out was the proper course of action here. Honestly, I was on board with the plan this time around. Fading to black was a fantastic idea.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

It took awhile to realize that I was awake. I had drifted for awhile, floating through deep slumber with no grasp of the world around me, when suddenly sensation returned. I felt as though I was surrounded by a thick fog, impossible to see or hear or get an idea of location, but my sense of touch disagreed. I could dimly feel fabric, both over and underneath me, cushioning me where I lay. I tried to grab it, to anchor myself to something, but for a time my hands simply wouldn't obey, their protests coming to my tired brain in the form of weak stabs of dull pain, the kind that talks a big talk but doesn't lead to anything more.

I made an effort to focus, an attempt to push away the fog in my head, and bit by sluggish bit the world returned to me. I saw light, unobtrusive and plain, from a lamp overhead and slightly to my right. I saw a blur of white cloth around me, which I slowly realized fit the description my fingers had been reporting back. Sheets. I was in a bed somewhere. My muscles ached, but I forced my head to turn. First to the left, where I saw a plain-looking white wall, most of its surface area taken up by a large window with a view of uptown Piltover and a clear blue sky outside. A dark blue chair was placed next to me, pointed towards my bed, and at the head of my bed sat a large machine, its round monitor presenting a steady flow of information scrolling almost too fast to read. My eyes narrowed as a strange sensation periodically overcame me, but with some more focus I realized I was hearing the thing beep at a constant and steady rhythm. Once I remembered I had ears, I became slowly aware of the soft jazz wafting through the room, sitting in the air like a cloud of sound.

"Turn that off," I mumbled almost too soft to hear, my voice cracking as I put it to use again.

"About time you started complaining," I heard a familiar voice replied, "Heavens forbid you got a bump on the head and discovered good taste… or class."

Recognition dawned on me a little too slowly, but when it did, I smiled. I turned my head the other way, towards the sound of the voice, and saw Caitlyn sitting up next to me… in her own bed.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Caitlyn said softly, a warm smile on her face as she watched me with friendly eyes.

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I had questions, but my head still felt like it was filled with a thick fog. I looked her over, and immediately realized she was bedridden, evidently due to the thick purple cast on her left leg up to the knee, although the long white bandage spiraling around her right arm to the elbow probably contributed as well. She wore a white hospital gown with small blue polka dots on it, and had in one hand a well-worn paperback book. I could just see past her to a small table on the other side of her bed, where her purple hat and a teacup sat. Judging by the lack of steam rolling up from the teacup, it was likely empty. I looked down at myself, and saw a similar gown covering me along with clean white sheets. I tried to get a good look at my injuries, but my body refused to cooperate, responding to any attempt to move with aches, pains, throbs, or some combination of the three. I turned my head back to her and noticed the title of the book read "In Bed With The Opposition" and featured a woman with long brown hair entirely too close to a man who was undoubtedly more muscular and gorgeous than Garen on one of his 'rugged' kicks. "Romance novels?" I asked skeptically. "Not mysteries?" It took more out of me than I expected to say all those syllables, and I coughed abruptly.

Caitlyn turned the book around in her hand, looking at the cover I had beheld, and smiled softly. "Mysteries are no fun when you solve them a quarter of the way through and watch the main character bumble about for the next twenty chapters," she commented, and then turned her eyes to me. "Hungry?" She put the book down and watched me as I continued to get my bearings, and while her smile had vanished, it was replaced with nothing but a casual calm.

I hadn't thought about it, but then again the act of thought had been difficult for the past few minutes. The fog in my head was slowly clearing, but I still didn't feel right. "Kinda," I said, again wincing as I tried to push myself up.

"Stop it," she chastised softly, "You'll tear your stitches."

Caitlyn reached over to the table and pushed a small button, one I hadn't noticed. A moment or so later a nurse opened the door into the room and looked at us with a measured concern. "Is everything alright?" She was a fairly plain-looking woman, with little to no makeup hiding her oval face from scrutiny. She had warm brown eyes and soft lips, along with lines around both that showed she wasn't a stranger to stress or to laughter. Her curly brown hair was cut short, and while she didn't have the figure of a model, it was clear she wasn't a slouch. Odds were she just took care of others more than she took care of herself.

I would have made a sarcastic sort of 'count my stitches and tell me what you think' comment, but the act of speaking took more out of me than I expected. "Could you be a dear and help Vi sit up?" Caitlyn asked, "And after that would you kindly bring something for her to eat now that she's awake?"

The nurse nodded and walked over to a small cupboard along the wall, retrieving a pillow that she set down next to my bed. She reached one arm under my back, eliciting a groan of pain from my tired throat, and helped me rigidly move so that I was sitting up. I felt something strange rub on my ankle as it happened, but was too tired to care. Once the nurse had propped my head up with the extra pillow she smiled. "What would you like to eat?"

"Steak," I grumbled.

"Perhaps some applesauce and milk," Caitlyn suggested, "Your stomach might not-"

"Steak," I grumbled again, putting as much defiance into the grumble as I could muster, which wasn't much at this point. "Rare." The word was added as much to make sure I didn't eat shoe leather as it was to spit in Caitlyn's eye. A pastime of mine, I might add.

The nurse nodded with a soft smile and left the room without another word. I sat like that for awhile, trying to remember what had happened through the night, but as the memories surfaced out of the fog in my head I quickly decided it was better to avoid thinking about it for now. Picturing getting slammed into the wall made me hurt by reflex, and before I thought too hard about it I turned my attention back to Caitlyn. She was back to reading her paperback in content silence, and I almost thought I saw her glance up and take note of my attention before she continued.

"How long?" I asked after a minute spent watching her read.

Caitlyn didn't look up at me, but I saw her eyes pause their scroll across the pages. "Two days," she said softly, her tone devoid of emotion. "Three for you."

I waited for her to say more, but she didn't, and after a moment's pause I saw her eyes resume reading. She was waiting for me to talk. I knew what she wanted to talk about, but she wanted me to bring it up. Dammit.

"You okay?" I asked.

She looked up this time, shooting me a 'are you really going to ask that' look, then sighed and looked over the top of her paperback at the cast. "I'll be fine. I'll just have to do more paperwork than usual for a few months."

"That's good," I said softly, "I'm glad."

No one spoke for a few minutes, and I opened my mouth only to close it wordlessly several times. I didn't know how to bring it up, how to start talking about something that seemed like it would only end badly. Eventually, I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes. "Cait, I'm-"

The door opened abruptly, and the nurse came in with a small tray bearing a white porcelain cup and a tall glass of milk. She unfolded a pair of small legs on the bottom of the tray and balanced it on the bed, the legs sitting on the bed an inch or two from either side of my hips. I didn't have the energy to complain, so I offered her a shallow nod and kept my eyes on the tray. Milk and a cup of applesauce. I'd save a glare for her later.

"Thanks," I said softly.

"It was my pleasure," she replied, "The steak will be up in a few minutes." That brought a smile to my face as she left the room, and made me slightly less apprehensive about the applesauce.

After the door closed I ate a spoonful of the applesauce. My tongue was far from impressed, but my stomach was grateful for the easy digestion work. I was about to take another when Caitlyn said "Were you about to say something, Vi?"

I paused, then let the spoon sit in the cup and looked back over at her. The spoonful of applesauce had helped my throat, but I suddenly didn't feel much like talking. "Yeah," I said slowly. "I, uh… I'm… sorry. For what I said last night… three nights ago. I didn't mean it." I coughed a little and fell silent, waiting for her to respond. I would have had more practice with crap like this if I didn't hate it so much.

Caitlyn looked down at her paperback for awhile. I wanted to say more, but words had trouble forming in my head. Jazz continued to fill in the background, and for once I was grateful that it did- I wasn't sure if I could handle the silence. Eventually she sighed, put a bookmark in the book, and set it down on the table next to her. She didn't look at me right away, instead she looked down at her casted leg, her expression unreadable. Not that I was great at reading her expression in the first case, I just often guessed she wasn't happy with me and was often right in situations like this. "Bradford told me what happened," she said.

I winced. He didn't hate me, or vice versa, but we didn't really get along. I didn't really remember what I said to him, but it probably wouldn't color me in a good light.

"You called him by his actual name instead of that stupid nickname," she said with the faintest whisper of a smile. "He kept mentioning that. He also said you were more worried about me and about making sure Gnar didn't escape than you were about yourself." This time she looked at me, and while she didn't seem happy, she had a sort of satisfaction about her. "You put yourself in harm's way just to make sure Gnar wasn't seriously injured. Why?"

I shrugged. "He changes back when he gets tired. No reason to get nasty."

Cait nodded slowly, as if trying to figure something out. "You showed restraint, and quite a bit of it. Why do that for Gnar, but not for Jenkins and Hurley?"

I blinked. "Who?"

"The two in the alley," Caitlyn said with a voice that wasn't angry or accusatory but still stayed serious.

"Scruffy and Patches?" I asked. Anger boiled up in my gut, anger I didn't have a way to displace, but I was too tired to let it show. After a moment, the anger seemed to fade, becoming nothing more than a nagging heat at the back of my mind. "They tried to scare people, Cait. Hurt them for money." Though I didn't intend it, there was an undertone of venom to my voice, a layer of disgust and hate that I couldn't keep from dripping off of the words. "They've had chances to change. They didn't."

I still couldn't read her expression. She looked down at the cast for some time, and I got the feeling she was turning pieces around in her head, looking for how they fit together. Solving me like a puzzle. Or maybe she was evaluating me, figuring out whether or not I was worth keeping around. I didn't like the direction either train of thought was headed.

After what felt like eternity but was only the length of a free-form saxophone solo according to the ambient music, Caitlyn looked at me with that unreadable gaze. "Vi, you are arguably the worst police officer I've ever worked with." She paused, measuring my reaction (a lethargic, dumbfounded look), and then continued, her voice even and matter-of-fact. "Your methods for dealing with criminals are barbaric, your respect for authority doesn't exist, and your approach to police work is the equivalent of hitting something until it works, which rarely produces more than extra work for me to clean up. You're stubborn, arrogant, violent, classless, thick-headed, disrespectful, and dangerous to everyone around you. Were I younger and less judicious when I first caught you, you wouldn't have made it to a trial, and I certainly wouldn't have offered to enlist you. Some days I still regret that decision."

I didn't look her in the eyes. I didn't say anything. Hell, even if I did start talking, I had no idea what words would come out.

"Despite all of that," she continued, "I can't for the life of me find a fault in your morals." I heard warmth in her voice, and looked up to see her smiling at me. "Your heart is in the right place, Vi, and while that doesn't account for everything, it means a lot more than you know. While I wish you did what was lawful more often of than not, you're still doing what's right. I haven't done anything to remove you from the force in these last few days, and I won't. Please do work on that 'restraint' issue, though. I quite like it, and I'm glad to see you possess it."

I… didn't know how to respond to that. I looked from Caitlyn down to the food on the tray. "I…" I said slowly, letting the sound hang in the air before I cut it off, letting it be washed away in the sound of the jazz. "…Thanks." I took a mouthful of the applesauce, letting it sit on my tongue. Either my head was playing tricks on me or the applesauce tasted a bit sweeter. A soft smile crept up on my face as I picked up the glass of milk and took a slow pull.

Then the door opened so abruptly that I spat the milk all over my shirt in surprise.

The nurse came in, a small white plate in her hand, and immediately looked apologetic when she saw the mess I'd made. "I'm very sorry, miss, you have visitors here to see you." At the cue in stepped Heimerdinger, who noticed my milk stain and immediately went to greet Caitlyn first while I cleaned myself up. After the professor came Jayce, another League champion and the self-proclaimed "Defender of Tomorrow". As hokey as it was, Jayce was the closest thing some people around here had to a real-life superhero. He had a chiseled jaw and slicked-back dark brown hair, a small tuft of it hanging over his forehead for that look that drove all the ladies (that weren't me) just craaaaazy for the guy. He had a bit of five-o-clock shadow going on, and he looked a bit tired, but otherwise held himself like nothing was wrong, which must have taken almost as much out of him as everything else he'd been doing. He wore an ornate leather jacket, comfortable and iconic, and in one hand was a massive hextech hammer, a weapon of his own invention that could transform at a moment's notice to fire powerful electrical blasts that were almost as awesome as my fists.

"What brings you here, Wonderboy?" I asked, using my nickname for him in the hopes it bugged him. It didn't seem to. Dang.

"Just in case," he said, his tone of voice showing the edges of exhaustion even if his posture and face hid it well.

I was about to ask 'just in case of what' when an orange blur flashed into the room, scampering around the beds and a few feet up the wall before he fell to a heap in the chair next to Caitlyn. Gnar's bulbous black eyes zoomed around until they found me, and his smile threatened to tear his head in half horizontally. "Vee!" he cheered, and unceremoniously bounced onto Caitlyn's bed, up into the air, and landed square on my stomach. Thankfully I hadn't eaten much, because in addition to flaring up the pain of several abdomen-located wounds he also made my stomach churn a bit. Jayce noticed the way my eyes bulged almost out of my sockets and picked up Gnar, sitting down in the chair next to my bed with the excited yordle in his lap.

"You're on yordle duty?" I asked Jayce as the nurse came up to my bed, placing a plate on the tray. It had bite-sized pieces of steak laid out on it, cooked rare. It smelled good enough, and I offered my thanks as the nurse left, keeping her attention on the prehistoric yordle she seemed more than sketchy about.

"Yeah," he responded with a smile, "With you two in here, I'm watching this guy and the city."

I grinned. "That explains why you look like someone chewed you up and spat you out."

His laugh was genuine, but tired. "A good night's sleep and a shave and I'll be good as new. How do you feel?"

"Worse than you look," I joked. "But I'll be up and at 'em in a day."

"You most certainly will not," Caitlyn interjected from the other bed.

"Like you'll stop me with that cast, Cait," I replied back, a devious smile slowly growing on my face. I could see Jayce's exasperation growing, but he wouldn't stop me either.

"…But I had a feeling you'd try," Caitlyn continued, "So I cuffed your leg to your bed."

It took a second for what she said to sink in, and when it did I immediately flung aside the covers, my eyes wide with surprise. Lo and behold, a silver cuff latched around my right ankle connected me to a bar on the bed. I swung my torso forwarding an attempt to reach for the cuff but white-hot pain erupted in my side, emanating like waves of fire from the deep gash in my side I had gotten from the rebar. I continued to strain until I couldn't bear the pain, then slumped back into the pillows, panting a bit from the exertion. "What gives?!" I asked angrily.

Caitlyn, who had been watching me try to free myself patiently, simply smiled. "You're too stubborn for your own good. You can get the cuffs removed when you're in good enough shape to get them off. I know you know how."

"What if I gotta use the bathroom?" I asked. I heard Jayce make a noise, probably somewhere between disgust and amusement, but he wasn't in range for a gut punch so I ignored him.

"I have a key," she said, "I'll let you up."

"I'll beat the hell out of you," I threatened.

Caitlyn took it with a whole bucket of salt and laughed. "In your condition? Vi, I know enough about fighting- from you, even- to make you regret that decision."

I frowned a petulant child's frown and crossed my arms, looking down at my meal of applesauce and steak pieces like I was trying to make it burst into flames through contact with my anger. "I could take you," I said bluntly, aiming for something threatening but sounding more like the last jabs of a kid who had been sent to time-out. Caitlyn's laugh grew richer. I wanted to argue, to hurl insults at her, but the strain of reaching for the cuffs took a lot out of me. Hell, she was right, I was in no condition to be doing anything that required getting out of bed. Not that she'd ever hear me admit it.

I noticed Gnar wriggling in Jayce's hands and looked over at him. The yordle was laser-focused on the pieces of meat on the plate in front of me. I reached over to take Gnar and sat him down on my bed next to me, well away from the cut on my side. He immediately started scrabbling towards the plate of meat, but I held it away from him until he calmed down. "Shaguvara!" He shouted as he pointed at the meat.

"Say please," I responded curtly. I expected a comment along the lines of 'didn't know that was in your vocabulary' from Caitlyn, but heard nothing.

"Shaguvara!" Gnar continued. "Roosh!"

"Behave, little buddy," I said sternly, and put the plate back down on the table slowly. Gnar looked like he was about to dive for it, but he remained in his spot. I picked up a piece of the steak and handed it to him, and it touched his fingers for a split second before it vanished into his gnashing teeth. I ate a piece of the steak myself, and was delightfully surprised to find it was actually pretty good, especially as far as hospital food was concerned. I handed Gnar a second piece, which fared about as well as the first, then noticed all three of the others had fallen silent, watching me feed the yordle. I blinked and glanced around at them. "What?"

"Upon further investigation," Heimerdinger began, his head barely eye level with the beds, "We deduced that Gnar here likely awoke from ice somewhere in the Freljord, and was later found and brought to Piltover by one of the expeditions going on up there. It seems he had a tantrum, underwent the explosive growth we've seen from him since, went on a bit of a rampage in the Academic district, and then found you. By that thread of logic, it's highly probable that Gnar exhibits signs of imprinting behavior around you, seeing as you were likely the first person to befriend him."

I remained silent, thinking about what that meant as I fed him another piece of steak. While the yordle behaved quite a lot like a talking puppy, he was still an intelligent (if culturally stunted and very young) yordle, and more importantly he had some dangerous anger issues. "That's kind of a problem," I said slowly, "We can't keep him with us, not after what he did to the place. So… where can he go?"

"We were discussing that yesterday, while you were asleep," Caitlyn said. "The best place for him seems to be at the Yordle Academy, where they can study him and try to learn more about him, or teach him our language."

"He's not safe around them," I responded, too tired to sound anything but calm. "And you can't just throw him in a cage."

Heimerdinger nodded as if he had been waiting for me to say that. "I am fairly certain I could design some sort of environment capable of containing Gnar for observation while also imitating a jungle region that he would feel comfortable within," he said as if it was a thought he'd rolled around in his head, "But the construction of such an environment, aside from being hazardous and expensive, will also take time."

Maybe I was grasping at straws, but I had the distinct feeling that this conversation was being led somewhere. "Well, he can't stay in the Academy, he can't stay with us, he can't stay here in the hospital." I gave Gnar another piece of steak.

Heimerdinger nodded again. I'd forgotten how much it made his hair shake. "While releasing him into the wild would likely be an effective way to neutralize the threat he would pose to the city, the opportunity for scientific discovery here is too monumental to squander. We need a way to keep a close eye on him and be able to contact and find him at a moment's notice to avoid letting him lose and losing track of him."

"I get the feeling you're getting to something…" I said slowly. I realized Gnar was looking at me with those big eyes again, so I gave him another piece of steak to placate him.

"We spoke with the Institute of War," Heimerdinger continued. "We told them we wish to hold a hearing to discuss whether or not Gnar can be instated as a champion."

That… was not what I was expecting. Then again, it made sense. Every champion of the League of Legends has a connection to the powerful summoners at the Institute of War, a way for them to call up a champion at a moment's notice to do battle. It would be a good way to keep Gnar in check until we could find a place for him to take up full-time residence, and it would give that crazy primal rage of his an outlet, hopefully making him less of a fuzzy time bomb when he wasn't on the rift.

I looked down at the yordle, still begging me with his eyes for more steak, and took a drink of my milk while I thought. Generally you had to be of a certain caliber to be considered as a champion, so that any idiot with a sword couldn't make the request and waste the Institute's time. That having been said, Gnar almost singlehandedly took out two of us. That didn't leave his fighting abilities in much question.

As the idea gained ground in my head, a grin slowly split across my face. I picked up Gnar, my hands under each of his armpits, and held him in the air as my smile widened. "Can you say 'top or feed', little buddy?"

Gnar raised his little hands and shook them wildly, excitement making him smile and wiggle in my arms. "Dah pah dee!"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"Alright, here's the next one," I said as spread my feet wide, my toes gripping as well as they could on the cool, smooth concrete. I shuffled a little bit to widen my stance and in the same instant held out my arms, extending the thumb, pointer and middle fingers of one hand in an imitation of a pistol. My other hand cupped the 'pistol' in its palm and I turned my neck slightly as if aiming down the sights. "Freeze!" I shouted abruptly at no one.

Gnar, standing a few feet away from me, hopped a foot in the air, landed in a square stance, and held out both hands pointed towards me. His fingers looked less like pistols and more like jazz hands, but with nails like his it was still adorably intimidating. "Ree!" he cried shrilly, altogether too enthusiastic about the imitation. He stood like that for a moment, but apparently the idea of not moving for any length of time didn't sit well with him because a few moments later he bounced up into the air again, this time landing on his head. His tail wiggled in the air as he wagged his butt back and forth tauntingly, chanting the phrase. "Ree! Ree! Ree!"

I felt a chuckle escape my lips as I lowered my hands, leaning backward until I found the bike parked just behind me in the middle of my workshop. "Needs some work," I said blandly, but I couldn't hide the entertainment from my voice. Gnar had stayed in the hospital room with Cait and I for the two weeks it had taken me to recover, and while I had been unable to teach him how to pick handcuffs in that time, it was great fun for everyone (excluding Miss-Reads-A-Lot who didn't seem nearly as enamored to spend time around the hyper little yordle).

I wouldn't have minded spending a teensy bit more time there (especially given the quality of the food), but Piltover's reputation for techmaturgic genius happened to extend to its medical systems too, and the combination of top-of-the-line (and likely experimental) technology and powerful healing magic made healing every cut, broken bone, and torn muscle take about half the time it normally would. Granted, I still wasn't exactly in fighting shape and getting around was noticeably more difficult than normal, but the fact that I was up at all was a testament to the skill of the people working there. And they did it all without stitching anything onto me, performing any "zombification" experiments or trying to replace my circulatory system with one that ran on radioactive sludge. Take that, Zaun.

"You ready for the next one?" I asked as I pushed myself off of the bike, wincing a bit as the load went back into my legs. Gnar grinned and chattered something unintelligible, which I guessed was a sign of confirmation. I had tried to learn his language through observation over the past week or so. While I had little to show for it, I had the feeling that if I listened to it enough I'd either have a breakthrough or forget to speak my own language. I raised my hands in the same 'fake-gun' pose, bringing to mind a variety of other phrases I could teach the little yordle when the world around me… thickened.

Maybe that's a weird way to describe it. I felt a sudden pressure push in on me, as if the very air had doubled in mass. It centered at my head, and I had the distinct feeling that migraines would come running if it didn't go away promptly. I sighed, lowering my hands, and waited for the message to come. It didn't take long. Words came into my head as if I had thought them up myself, but the mental voice echoed with a booming basso that drowned out any other idle specks of thought that might have been floating around in there. The communication magic was strong, and while it didn't invade my free will, the way it just showed up without warning made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

_Prepare yourself, Champion Vi, _the message boomed. _The time of the assembly approaches. Return the call when you are ready, and you will be brought to the Institute of War to join the others._

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair as the thoughts faded away, replaced by the usual radio static that went on up there. The feeling of pressure vanished, but I could still feel the faint presence of magic in the air, like the warmth emanating through the window on a sunny day. They were watching and waiting for me, and as much as I enjoyed taking my sweet time, you don't just keep the Institute and its summoners waiting. They had the power to transport a champion across the continent to the Institute, and you didn't want them exercising that power when you weren't ready. Made me glad I'd already gone to the facilities before the call came through.

"Get ready to go, little buddy," I said in passing to Gnar as I walked over to the door of the workshop and picked up my shoes, a pair of worn-down boots that weren't used in the field but still showed years of wear and tear. The hiking insole was a welcome cushion for my stiff feet, and with a smile of relief I looked back at Gnar who had remained motionless (aside from his usual restless bobbing). "Oh, right, nothing to get ready," I commented.

I walked back over to Gnar and scooped him up, holding him in my arms like an oversized dog. Gnar wiggled incessantly but calmed down as he felt the pressure return and a moment later I felt it as well, a tangible force that steadily grew until I could feel the presence of the summoners return to my mind. If they had spoken, it would be in the same blaring thought as the message before, but this time they remained silent. I stiffened a bit, puffing air out of my nose as I readied my will. While I normally had about as much magical talent as it took to create hextech gauntlets, I knew enough to influence someone else's spell. I couldn't deflect fireballs with my bare hands, but I knew how to impress my will upon a spell, which was all it took.

With a thought I sent my reply to the summons and almost instantly the pressure redoubled, the air feeling as thick as water around me. Yellow sparks danced around me, settling on the floor in rings of light, marked with magical sigils that blazed with a carefully controlled fire of magical energy. Gnar shook with surprise and fear in my hands, but I kept a close hold on him to make sure he got pulled along with me. As the lights settled around me I felt a pulling sensation, almost like the gravity keeping my feet on the ground, beginning to tug at me from a spot barely above the crown of my skull, just under the skin. My stomach churned uncomfortably and I was momentarily glad that I had experienced this before or I might have lost my lunch. My conscious mind was aware of the world blurring around me as yellow light obscured the workshop, filling the room with a glow that made it hard to discern details. In a sudden jolt of movement I felt as if my body was pulled up into my skull and back out faster than the speed of thought, and for a second the sensation of gravity redoubled around me, causing me to stumble.

I felt myself tip over as a pair of arms wrapped around my back, carrying my weight long enough to get my feet back under me. As the yellow lights faded away I heard Caitlyn's voice just behind me, mostly calm but with the slightest edge of concern. "Are you alright, Vi?" I couldn't see very well thanks to the lights, but I had a vague idea of where I was- a fairly bland, stone-walled room within the Institute of War that was used as a destination for summoning spells. Unless multiple people were summoned at once it was usually completely empty and devoid of decoration, to avoid any complications with the summoning spells. Didn't want to accidentally teleport a person into a bookcase, after all.

I steadied myself and put a hand to my head while the sensations died down slowly and I returned to the physical world. "Yeah, thanks," I said slowly, "It just hit me a little harder than I thought." As my eyes readjusted I saw Gnar, who had slipped free of my grasp, take a wobbling step and topple over onto his side, clearly disoriented by the teleportation spell that he'd just experienced. I couldn't fault the little yordle, just about everyone reacted the same way the first time. I turned my head back to Caitlyn, who still stood behind me with one arm rested on my shoulder, ready to apply support if needed. Her expression quickly changed from one of concern to one of annoyance, and I saw her eyes run up and down the length of my body, taking in my incredibly stylish choice of attire. "What?" I asked, as innocently as I could manage.

"I told you to dress appropriately," Caitlyn said, the sound of irritation impossible to hide in her voice.

I looked down at myself, fighting to contain my smile. I wore a pair of shorts that overqualified for their name, the denim fabric stopping just about where my thighs began. The boots went about halfway up my shins, and between the two there was nothing hiding my well-toned legs, which looked _damn good_ despite still feeling stiff from recovery. I wore a black shirt small enough to show curves without restricting bloodflow (very important for looking good while remaining conscious) emblazoned with the phrase "BARON CAN SUCK MY SPIRIT STONES" in white letters. Both the shirt and shorts exposed plenty of skin on my arms and legs, which let my numerous tattoos see the light of day, which was probably the part that Caitlyn was most annoyed with, aside from literally everything else.

"This is appropriate," I commented, trying to sound like she had offended my quaint sensibilities, "Laundry day, Cupcake. It was either this or nothing." I let an overly flirty smile creep up on my face and I stepped a little bit closer. "Unless you'd rather I went with something else," I whispered, and Caitlyn immediately shoved at my shoulder to get me to step back. The barest hint of a blush crossed her face, replaced quickly and effectively with irritation.

"Now is not the time for fooling around," Caitlyn hissed, her brows knit so tightly together that I wondered if they'd stick that way. "The assembly is about to start, let's get going. We can discuss your idea of 'formal wear' later." She spun on her heels and I got a look at her fairly formal purple dress furnished with light stripes and brown belts before she headed through the door at the end of the room and out of sight. I looked back at Gnar with a smile and helped him up off the ground. He groaned with confusion but made it to his feet, and waddled slowly along with me out of the door into the Institute of War.

Words like "huge", "big" and "holy crap" fail to accurately convey the scale of the Institute, but still… holy crap. The place was built centuries ago to act as a neutral ground for various factions and nations, but it wasn't until the most powerful summoners in the world convened and chose the massive building as their home that it saw a surge of growth to accommodate all of the political traffic that passed through its halls on a daily basis. The summoning room opened into the main hall, which served as a lobby for comers and goers to pass through on their way to various conference halls and assembly rooms elsewhere in the Institute. Well, normally it did. Apparently our little assembly was a big enough deal to summon us straight into the main chamber of the Institute of War.

The assembly chamber looked as if it was carved out of a mountain. The stone floors, while beautifully marbled, seemed organic and as natural as the dirt underneath its foundation, and the stone pillars that held up the ceiling some hundreds of feet above us seemed as if they had grown out of the ground. The pillars themselves, each as wide around as ancient trees, bore paintings depicting events in Valoran's history, as well as various runes and sigils scrawled in flowing paint at mathematically precise intervals across the stone. More sigils decorated the walls, some spelling words of power and other seeming to represent magical entities or spiritual beings. Purple and blue banners hung from the walls, their flowing script seeming to glow a soft white light that hovered an inch or two away from the fabric itself.

I had been in this main assembly chamber once before, when Caitlyn had stood before the Institute to recommend me as a champion of the League. It had been about the scariest thing I'd ever experienced, and part of it had to do with the way the place felt. Power was a tangible substance here, so deeply saturated that you could feel it in the stone, identifiable as a soft thrumming sensation, a tension stretched tight like the skin of a drum. It was less of a magical anomaly and more a sign of the incredible power that those who walked these halls possessed, and given that the main assembly hall was only used when a conclave of the more powerful summoners in the Institute was called, it made sense that the place emanated its own magical resonance.

As I came in, I saw Caitlyn take a seat at a large and blocky wooden chair, one of many positioned behind one of two large stone tables. The one that she and Heimerdinger were seated at was of modest size, its carefully-carved surface perfectly smooth with the exception of the magical sigils carved into its corners and edges, which glowed a soft purple that was almost imperceptible if you weren't seated at it. The table at the opposite end of the room was very similar, if not a bit larger and raised a few feet on a platform. Three massive wood chairs sat at rooted spots at the table, the material made of very-much-alive oak and sycamore and pine, the scents of which were barely perceptible through the feeling of raw magic that hung in the air. Blue-green markings carved into the trees glowed with a soft humming sound that could easily be misconstrued as white noise if you hadn't heard it before, and various seasonal plumage bloomed from the sides and back of the trees, bright greens matching with the current summer season. I walked over with Gnar and took a seat next to Caitlyn, the one on the furthest-right end of the table. I was about to speak up when the High Summoners (that's capital H, capital S) appeared from a door at the far end of the assembly room and walked in unison towards the other table.

The High Summoners were three men, but given that they were the three most powerful entities in this world and likely this entire realm of existence, 'men' no longer seemed like an apt description. They wore thick robes of purple, blue and aquamarine respectively, the fabric thick and trimmed with a golden weave that glittered slightly even when light did not shine upon it. Heavy cowls covered their faces in shadow, and it was only through the way they hunched ever so slightly as they walked that I could guess their age. That having been said, the pure magical essence they possessed made it impossible to guess exactly how many years they had lived. It was known that magic could be used to extend one's lifespan, which left the age of a person wielding more magic than anyone in Valoran a permanent mystery.

They entered in silence, and each took a seat in one of the living tree chairs with an ancient patience that did not imply weakness or sluggishness, less like an aging man and more like a human glacier, deliberate and immovable. Caitlyn and the others stood from their seats as the High Summoners entered, and after a moment's hesitation I rose as well. I may have a rebellious streak a mile wide, but the streets didn't raise me to be an idiot. When all three High Summoners were seated, we all sat down. Gnar, who had plopped himself down on the floor next to my chair, got to his feet and grinned widely, showing his enlarged lower canines. "Gnar kabbo!" he shouted cheerfully.

The summoners did not respond. Silence hung in the air for a moment, and I could feel the very magic in the room course around them like orbiting stars. Eventually a voice rang out in the large assembly hall, originating from one of the summoners, although the acoustics of the hall made it impossible to tell which one.

"Which champion shall step forward and speak on behalf of this guest?" asked the voice. It was almost unnaturally deep, shaking with something I couldn't perceive- did magic change your vocal cords?- and since none of the summoners moved their heads when they spoke, I had no idea if the voice came from any one of them, all of them, or none of them. Caitlyn, her posture perfectly formal and proper, stood up from the table and stepped around me, walking to the center of the room.

"High Summoners," she said curtly, "We have chosen to discuss this matter as a group. As such, when it becomes relevant, members of our group shall step forward to make statements."

"Understood," the summoners spoke. "And am I led to believe the purpose of this assembly involves this… yordle?"

While the sentence was phrased as a question, there was no confusion in the voice. This was a mere formality, it was likely that the summoners had already understood the situation and come to a decision.

"Indeed," she confirmed, "We have asked for this assembly to discuss the yordle named Gnar." Caitlyn nodded and gestured to him. Gnar looked at Caitlyn with curious eyes, but did not move.

"Get up there," I hissed quietly to Gnar, nudging at him with my foot. Gnar looked up at me this time, blinked, then stood up, walked a few feet back behind the table, and sat back down, beginning to nibble on his boomerang. All eyes turned back to Caitlyn, who hadn't let Gnar's flippancy shake her.

"Gnar is a yordle," she continued, "But not of our time. Our best estimates suggest Gnar is a yordle from prehistoric times, at least before the Freljord was frozen in the wake of the Watchers. As such, he has difficulty understanding our language and customs."

The summoners were silent for awhile, and then the voice rang out again. It was slightly, almost imperceptibly higher, making me wonder if it was another one of them. "Champion Caitlyn," they said, "You come to this assembly asking that this Gnar be instated as a champion of the League of Legends?" they asked. So they knew beforehand why we were here. That meant their minds might have already been made up. Crap. "What qualifications does this yordle possess?"

"For that, High Summoners," Caitlyn said with a step backwards, "I defer to Champion Heimerdinger." As she stepped back the afroed yordle left his seat and came forward to the center of the room where Caitlyn had stood, his wiggling hair the only thing that didn't have an air of seriousness about it.

"High Summoners," Heimerdinger addressed the three, "We at the Yordle Academy have done extensive research on Gnar's condition, and have found what we have identified as a 'rage gene'." A small silver globe with a large red lens floated out of Heimerdinger's hair and hovered a few feet away from him, projecting an image in light in the middle of the room. It showed a profile view of Gnar, along with a detailed look at a series of gene samples. I recognized them as the ones he'd shown me at the mechanics shop. "As you can see from this diagram, while many of his core gene sequences differ mildly from the modern yordle genetic structure, one in particular stands out due to a very notable mutation. We believe this gene was recessive at the time, and eventually became obsolete due to the difficulty yordles with this rage gene had in controlling it." The diagram expanded, showing a small image of Gnar outlined within the larger silhouette of his enraged form. "When greatly angered, Gnar seems capable of startlingly sudden growth, drastically increasing his offensive and defensive capabilities. Champions Caitlyn and Vi were involved in a fight against Gnar's enraged form and it took the combined efforts of both of these League champions to subdue him."

"You say that Gnar cannot control these transformations?" the summoner asked slowly.

Heimerdinger nodded. "While more time to study his various genetic traits and inconsistencies would likely yield more solid results, our strongest theories state that he does not appear to have any more control of the form and its transformations than he has control over his emotions."

"Hey Cait," I whispered softly.

"What," she responded shortly, clearly not wanting to look like she was doing anything remotely naughty around the big bad summoners, "This had better be important, Vi."

"When do I say my piece?" I asked.

"Let us do the talking," Caitlyn responded. "We'll do our best, don't worry about it."

"But Cait, I-"

"Shhh," Caitlyn interrupted me. "Just trust us, Vi. Please."

I frowned, crossing my arms in front of my chest and furrowing my brow, but I stayed quiet. "…When combined with his mental age which appears to be fairly juvenile, it's unlikely that Gnar could be taught to easily control his rage gene," Heimerdinger concluded.

The summoners didn't speak, but I saw one of them turn in the direction of Gnar. From behind our table he began to float, lifted in the air as if by invisible hands. In his surprise Gnar dropped his boomerang, and I picked it up as the yordle was levitated through the air to hover in the center of the room, next to Heimerdinger. Gnar's eyes widened with confusion that slowly gave way to fear, and I saw him look to me, his arms helplessly reaching out for me to grab him. My knuckles tightened until I felt like I was going to get up and punch a god-wizard in the face, but I felt a soft, warm hand close around one of my knuckles and saw Caitlyn stand up next to me. "Take it easy," she said softly, then stepped up to take Heimerdinger's place next to Gnar.

"Champion Caitlyn," the voice of the summoners spoke, "Why do you believe that this yordle should be instated as a League champion?"

Caitlyn looked at the frightened yordle next to her and somehow managed to hide her emotions behind a mask of solid stone. I got the idea she felt the same way I did for the yordle, but she didn't let herself show it. "When we first detained him in Piltover, we believed him an animal, High Summoners," she said calmly. Next to her, Gnar whined with fright, but she paid him no mind. "Time spent with him has taught us that he is simply young and in a foreign world. We discussed many options to find an appropriate home for him, and decided that instating him as a champion would-"

Caitlyn was about to continue speaking, but Gnar's terrified squeaks interrupted her, growing deeper and gaining a threatening growl underlining their volume. My heart dropped into my stomach as I saw his eyes, still shaking with confused fear, begin to film over with a sickly red color, his fur darkening to match it. I didn't realize I had gotten up until I had already crossed half the distance between us, his boomerang in hand. "Vi!" shouted Caitlyn, but I paid her no mind. I could see Gnar's body twisting, bones thickening and muscle swelling as he began to transform, and if I could just get to him, if I could just calm him down…

When I reached him I tried to throw my arms around him, to comfort him as best I could, but I was repelled by pure force, pushed away from Gnar on all sides like I was magnetized. I strained against the magic as hard as I could, but my muscles screamed protests and I took a step back, reddening marks on my arms where the magic had pressed against them. I watched, stepping back further, as Gnar's fear transformed into rage, and as his rage transformed him. His fur slowly finished changing color, the color of dried blood, and underneath it his body rippled and swelled until he was the size of a small elephant. His tusks elongated, blood visible on the roots as they grew out of his gums to enormous size. His eyes, those eyes so stricken with fear, had not changed in size, and in contrast to his growing head they seemed tiny. The red faded, leaving behind a fiery, bestial yellow, and Gnar roared. The sound echoed in the enclosed hall, each wave pounding at my ears like a jackhammer, until suddenly… it stopped.

In the wake of the roar I had closed my eyes, and when I reopened them I saw that Gnar had not stopped roaring, but the sound had stopped emitting from his mouth. Silence hung in the air as everyone in the room watched the massive beast of rage thrash in futility a few feet above the ground, all of its incalculable strength and primal fury worthless in the cold magic of the High Summoners. Their voice rose again, the tone implacably calm, as if nothing at all had changed the course of the discussion. "Continue, Champion Caitlyn," they said.

"We…" Caitlyn began, her eyes still locked on Gnar's thrashing form, "We discussed at length the possibilities of imprisonment, of confinement." Standing across from her I saw the fear in her eyes, and I knew it all too well. "I-It did not yield a feasible solution, which is why we believe induction into the League is the best possible option for his safety and the safety of others."

"Were we to induct Gnar as a champion," the summoners spoke, "It would be for his prowess in combat. Given his unstable nature," they added, gesturing to the rage-beast in the air, "We would likely need to confine him as we have the champions Brand and Nocturne, so as to ensure the safety of others until such time as he can compete."

"He's just a kid," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. I had looked away from Gnar- it hurt to see him like this, furious and terrifying and utterly helpless. I couldn't get the image of his frightened eyes begging for my help to fade out of the forefront of my mind. I heard a popping sound, and only dully realized it was coming from my knuckles.

Despite the distance between us, the summoners still heard me. "Innocence is not an excuse for dangerous behavior, Champion Vi."

Something inside me snapped. "You wanna know where you can shove your freaking-"

"Vi," Caitlyn spoke over me, adopting her authoritative voice once more, "That's enough."

"No, it's not!" I shouted back at her. "He's not some animal, and you want them to cage him up like one?!"

"It is the way things are," the summoners responded. "If the inducted champion is likely to harm the people of Valoran, we have no choice."

"SHUT U-" I screamed, but in the midst of my rage the words froze in my throat, thoughts put on lockdown as if my brain had been caught in a massive vice, its origins impossible to figure out from the skull-splitting agony. I wanted to grip my head, to make the pain stop, but my body refused to listen, my muscles frozen in place. My eyes stared ahead, directly at the High Summoners I had dared to defy, and in the moment of infinite pain and utter helplessness I felt like a drop of water to a tsunami, so unfathomably out of my league that all of my anger was immediately replaced with blind, unfeeling fear. I felt my vision grow dark, my eyes losing focus as the vice grip on my mind tightened, and a single thought made its way through the pain, through the fear, through the absolute mental lockdown, repeating itself in an echoing symphony in my head. _Hold your tongue, Champion Vi._

I came to my senses lying on the ground, drool dripping from my open mouth onto the floor. My eyes were wide open and had been that way for some time, ache from drying tissue almost negligible with the way my head pounded in pain. I felt my body shaking, although my muscles were not the cause. Hands pushed at my shoulders, shaking the disorientation from me until I heard Caitlyn's voice begging me to wake up. I blinked my eyes and her words ceased their repetition, and it took me a minute more to recover the mental faculties that had been shut down by the summoner's magic. I felt myself shivering and only got control of it when Caitlyn helped me to my feet. "Will you behave?" the voice of the summoners rang out.

"Y-Yes," I said, the words coming from my mouth without thought, as the concept of thinking was too painful.

"High Summoners," Caitlyn said, desperately trying to avoid letting her concern show in her voice, "Perhaps there is a way to determine Gnar's disposition and capacity for violence. If we can show that he is docile, perhaps the confinement reserved for dangerous champions would not be necessary. Perhaps… Gnar could undergo a Judgment."

As my mental faculties returned to me I realized what she was suggesting. Judgment was an older method of inducting League champions, a practice that hadn't been used in years. Champions-to-be would enter an entirely dark room, alone with their mind, and would be forced to relive memories of their past, moments in their lives that defined them, in order to judge their skills, their ambitions, even their darkest secrets. While it was an extremely effective method of induction, the magic came at a price- many would-be champions were driven mad by the magic, the invasion of their mind too much for them to bear. Others couldn't handle what they saw, and were driven to the depths of depression and despair when confronted with phantoms of their past. It was eventually deemed too hazardous and costly of a practice, and was discontinued.

I could feel a thrumming sensation in the air, and my best guess was that it originated from the summoners, who were communing among themselves. They inclined their heads slowly towards Gnar, and my gaze followed to the massive beast whose rage had yet to subside despite his helplessness. I felt anger beginning to boil in my gut, but before I could open my mouth I felt an absolute cold take root, cutting away the anger and making the sides of my head hurt from a sudden but brief vice-like grip on my mind, remnants of the magic designed to keep me in line. I grimaced but kept quiet, and kept my eyes on Gnar long enough to see a purple mist coalesce around Gnar's eyes. The mist was translucent, but within it glowed sparks of powerful magic that danced around Gnar's face. Even without sound emitting from his voice it became clear that he was slowly losing his rage and within moments his rolling muscle and dark red fur had returned to Gnar's original yordle size and shape. He seemed absolutely exhausted as the magic slowly laid him to the ground, and without thinking I immediately picked him up in my arms, leveling a warning gaze at the summoners even though there wasn't much stopping them from doing it all over again.

"It is a viable option," the summoners spoke, and I felt their words echo in triplicate in my head, making the migraine they had caused double over on me until I was seeing stars. "But this one's mind is too old. We would require a catalyst, someone who has not undergone Judgment to accompany the yordle into the chamber. Through their eyes we may judge Gnar, and through our eyes, they too will be judged."

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, and I looked to Caitlyn to see her reaction. She had turned to look right at me. I saw the worry in her eyes, the look that said 'don't do it if you don't want to', but I had already made up my mind. "Judge me," I said slowly, stepping forward with Gnar asleep in my arms. I felt their gaze fall on me again and a white-hot fear, remnants of the pain of their control spell, gripped me momentarily.

"Very well, Champion Vi," three voices spoke, in unison. The resonation in my head redoubled, and with a grimace I turned to see a crack grow in one of the walls, opening a pair of ancient stone doors that had been imperceptibly fused with the wall in their age and lack of us. Within was an absolute darkness, the kind that seemed as if it would extend to the rest of the world if left alone. "Prepare yourselves for judgment."


	8. Chapter 8

_Hiya! I hope you're enjoying my story. Unfortunately, given the recent changes to the lore retconning the Institute of War, the summoners, and the entire League from existence in Runeterra, this story technically has no reason to exist. As you can imagine, that's put a real dampener on my urge to finish telling it. I'm going to put up the last two chapters I had already written (that would be Gnar and Vi's judgments) but I won't be writing any more after this. I have another cool story planned, but with work and school taking up a lot of my time I don't know when I'll be able to put it on paper. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of Vi Gabba! It's been a blast writing this, and I hope you feel the same way about reading it._

_I recommend listening to "Baba Yetu" by Peter Hollins (a cover of the Civ 4 theme) and swapping to "El Dorado" by Two Steps From Hell when things get dicey. You'll know where._

**Chapter 8**

Caitlyn had mentioned her own Judgment once or twice, but had been skimpy on the details, possibly because she figured I'd never have one of my own, having been inducted by recommendation instead. I knew they'd take a look inside my mind, but beyond that tidbit of information I was in the dark before I even stepped through the door. Beyond the towering stone doors was an abyss, and it was with no small amount of hesitation that I began to walk forward into it, the sleeping yordle Gnar in my arms. I heard the door creak behind me as I stepped past, and when they slammed shut my eyes found nothing to adjust to in the absolute blackness. My ears picked up vague sounds that I assumed were my clothes rustling and my heart beating, but as I stood in the darkness those seemed to fade as well. The sensation of the fuzzy yordle in my arms dulled, and panic began to set in as I felt the rest of my body cease to exist… for a moment.

The stone floor became softer under my feet, which no longer felt as though they were wearing shoes. I looked down, but still saw nothing. My ears twitched, twisting on the top of my head, searching for ambient noises. Wait, the top of my head? I reached up, my arms feeling short and stubby, and caught the feeling of thin fuzz covering my face. Confusion made me explore more, and I quickly discovered that the fuzz covered my entire body. I spun, looking for a source of light- anything at all- and off in the distance, barely visible through the darkness, I saw the color green. Just a smudge in the nothing, but I anchored myself on it, stepping forward with legs that didn't feel as long as before, one foot after the other until the smudge was surrounded by pockets of light and color, hints of a something off in the distance that was infinitely more than the abyss.

My walk turned into a sprint, and I noticed the colors coalesce into shapes as they came closer to me. I heard distant birdcalls, and the scent of fresh air and pine trees wafted past my twitching, wet nose. I felt the darkness slip away behind me, a relic of a world I was leaving behind, and before I had realized it had left I was there, bounding across the soft grasses of a mountainside trail as trees raced past me, their trunks wider than I could possibly reach around, their branches reaching into the skies as if they were trying to grab the clouds themselves. I heard the sound of running water and moved towards it, getting down on all fours in a movement that felt perfectly natural to me, my black nails digging into the dirt and pushing me forward at frightening speed.

I arrived at a riverbed a few moments later, part of a small clearing in the woods that showcased lush greens and beautiful multicolored flowers mere inches from the gently-flowing waters of the shallow river. I slowed to a walk, returning to my back two feet as I let my tail drag across the ground softly, leaving a thin line in the dirt behind me as I came up to the edge of the riverbed. Across the river stood a large brown deer, its branch-like antlers indicating that the creature had lived a long life of growth. I felt strangely connected to it, not in a direct sense, but in a feeling like we shared the same energy, although it was a sensation too unfamiliar to really put my finger on. The deer watched me warily, then lowered its head and took a drink from the river. I reached over to do the same, and got a good look at myself in the process. My fur was soft and short, colored a deep pink with lighter pastel stripes of the same color on my forehead, arms and what appeared to be a bit of my back. A black blotch of fur sat below my left eye, and another on the left side of my neck. My eyes, huge and black, ran over my features, from pointed bat-like ears tipped with purple to short black claws in white-furred hands, until I heard a rustling sound in the distance and noticed the deer on the other side of the riverbed jump away into the bushes, gone before I'd realized he'd left.

Behind me the rustling got louder, and I felt the fur on the ridges of my spine stand on end in response to my growing anxiety. As it reached the river I tensed up, but even that didn't prepare me for the orange flash that shot past me and stumbled to a halt in the waters. Recognition struck me as Gnar turned around to face me, his blue-tipped ears twitching this way and that, and his tail wiggled excitedly. "Skoova!" he shouted with assertion in his voice, and while the words still sounded like incomprehensible gibberish to my human mind, I felt understanding set in, running on a deeper connection that felt unfamiliar to me. "Meechoo baba!" Come on, he was saying to me, it's coming.

Around that time I heard the thunderous crack of something big and heavy impacting with a tree trunk, and as I turned around to peer through the bushes Gnar had passed through I felt thudding steps shake the earth. Instinct took over and before I knew what I was doing I had begun to race through the water towards Gnar, only glancing over my shoulder when I heard the bushes snap apart behind me. A bear, larger than any I'd seen before, roared in anger as it charged past the riverbed, a pair of arm-thick antlers sprouting from either side of its head lowered like a battering ram towards us. The points of the antlers were blunted, but it still wasn't difficult to picture them slicked with my blood so I got down on all fours and ran, following the orange yordle in front of me as his blue-crested tail dipped and wove like fuzzy lightning around trees and bushes with expert speed.

I expected to grow tired quickly, but the surge of energy I felt seemed to stem from a well that had no bottom. We ran for quite some time, evading the angry beast as long as we could until eventually, with a defeated roar of anger, the bear ceased its chase and slowed to a halt. We continued to run until Gnar felt safe, and he stopped me on a branch of a tree near one of the cliff-sides of the mountain. I perched on the tree next to him, letting my purple-tufted tail hang down, and turned to face Gnar. He smiled a devious smile at me and took hold of a small roughly-sewn sack that had been tied to his waist, opening it to show me a feast of bright purple and blue berries of various shapes and sizes, some large enough to barely qualify as 'berries' in the first place. "Oochiga maka," he said hungrily. "Laga keebee hika!" Food not his. Now, we eat!

Gnar sat down on the tree branch and opened the bag wider, grabbing a large berry and scarfing it down happily before he noticed that I had not joined him. He pulled out another berry and offered it to me, and with a bit of hesitation I sat down next to him and bit into it. The outer skin of the berry was bitter, but not enough to ruin the decadent sweetness of the fruit inside. I finished it quickly, and noticed Gnar looking at me curiously. "Boochibee?" he asked innocently as he handed me another berry, "Gnar gabba." You are new? I'm Gnar.

I opened my mouth for a moment, then realized while I understood his speech on a base level, I didn't know what to say. The thoughts coalesced in my brain for a moment and I decided to speak to see what would happen. Something connected with something else a moment later, and while I wasn't directly responsible for the words I babbled, I knew the message was correct. "Vye gabba," I said nervously. "Lachoo higa tukee." I'm Vi. Not from here.

Gnar nodded, biting into a handful of smaller berries on a thin vine, and pointed out to the valley displayed below. "Deeba," he said with a wide smile, his mouth full of berries. There. I craned my neck to see around the branches out to the valley, and noticed a small group of brown dots, likely huts of some sort, nestled in the mouth of the valley, near a small canyon separating two of the snow-capped mountain ranges that made up the horizon. It had to be miles from here, but my eyes seemed stronger than I was used to, able to easily pick out the rough shape of the village despite the distance. He gave me another berry and then wrapped the bag up, tying it to his waist once again. "Keebee wop?" he asked. We go?

I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. I was beginning to understand why I had to find this place, why I had started in darkness. I was in Gnar's mind, his memories, his experiences. The world did not exist in this place if it did not exist around him. While odds were good that a pink yordle named Vi didn't exist in his past, it didn't mean I could stray too far from him, not here. I needed to stay close, to experience his memories, even if it wasn't through his eyes. Honestly I wasn't sure I would have wanted to get into Gnar's head- being a yordle version of myself was already weird enough.

Once he was satisfied with my answer he grinned his approval, and led me down from the tree into the underbrush of the mountainside. He led the way like he knew the place, and we talked on the way to his village. He was young, very young, but he'd grown up fast. Elders had gone missing in the ice up north, so the children like him were learning to hunt, to provide for the tribe. He had ran about this valley and the mountains surrounding it since he could walk, and he knew them well. I didn't expect this much from him- back in Piltover, he had behaved more like a vaguely-advanced puppy- but he certainly seemed more adept in this situation than I felt. I avoided telling him about the future while we traveled, worried that it would damage the memory and make it more difficult for him to remember it, and fortunately we made it to his village just after nightfall, before I'd had to make things up about myself.

The village was a thriving ecosystem in and of itself. Yordles, simple and primitive like Gnar compared to those that ran the Academy in Piltover or took residence in Bandle City, appeared in all shapes, sizes and colors here. While the majority of the males tended to be brown, black or orange like Gnar, the females, while equally animalistic, often had purple or blue fur as short as mine, sometimes with white tufts on their heads, in between their large and pointed ears. I noticed that there weren't many older yordles, a sign that what he had said was true, and as we passed a few of the crude mud-brick huts the yordles had created, I tried to look inside to see if I could spot more of the yordles. Strangely enough, if Gnar had not looked inside the hut as he passed, I would only see darkness when I looked in, the blackened abyss of the chamber where his memories could not create a false reality.

I watched as we moved through the village, and saw many of the older yordles greet Gnar in their tongue as he passed by, friendly and jovial in meeting me as well. They were brothers, sisters, cousins and uncles, which gave me the impression that the yordles were more than a village, they were a family. The initial human thoughts that revelation brought on were ones of disgust, but when I sensed the warmth that these yordles held for each other, I couldn't help but embrace the sense of community I got from these creatures, these people like myself.

We reached a hut at the edge of the village and Gnar stopped, motioning for me to wait outside. I did so, noticing that what I could see of the horizon faded a bit as he went indoors, but when he returned it resumed its normal fidelity in the memory. Gnar had brought out a white skull, likely belonging to a large squirrel or some other such critter, and placed it on my head while I watched with confusion, nestling it between my two ears. It sat snugly and my eyes were drawn to the bird skull on top of his own head, and then to the skulls worn by the others in the tribe. It was a symbol of belonging, I realized. Gnar confirmed this with a warm smile that emphasized his teeth. "Boo takawaygo," he said warmly. You are home.

I grinned, feeling my feline teeth poke against my lips slightly, and opened my mouth to respond when I felt the temperature in the air plummet without warning, the words catching in my throat as if frozen solid. Fear, a deep and primal emotion that left no room for human reasoning, set in almost immediately, and I felt my fur stand on end as my eyes darted around searching for an origin of the danger. Gnar noticed it faster than I did and was already scaling the side of the hut, his eyes scanning the surroundings as he reached the roof of dried grasses and branches. My ears twitched this way and that, trying to locate the source of the cold, and they just managed to pick up the sound of undulating shrieks of yordle terror from the far end of the camp before the cries were suddenly cut short, removed from the air as if they had never existed.

Gnar shouted something in recognition of its origins and began bounding across the rooftops of the huts towards the other end of the village. I followed closely behind on the ground, carefully watching Gnar to make sure I didn't lose him, and we came to the other end were several of the huts had simply… stopped existing. The air blurred around grooves in the ground where huts had stood when we'd first come through this way, but when I tried to focus on them, to draw details into being, I found it impossible. This wasn't magic, not in the traditional sense, but rather an artifact of Gnar's memory, something he had chosen to forget, or that had been wiped away in the passage of time. It seemed strange, especially given how the world his memories had crafted had been so vivid until this moment, but I stopped wondering when I saw the creature causing the destruction float around one of the huts into view.

It defied description, partly because it resembled nothing I had seen before and partly because the blur of damaged memory obscured entire portions of its being, disassembling the visual clarity around it as if by an invisible fog. Tendrils of blue-colored cold slithered out from its center, their details blurred from memory but their shape and size indicating untold power. It hovered in the air, powered by what seemed to be raw magic, and pockets of light along its vague body seemed to emanate with a freezing presence that made my heart want to stop beating just from being nearby. The only thing that remained was the gigantic eye at its center, cold and blue and utterly alien in its origin. Recognition sparked dully in the back of my brain, reminding me of statues and carvings I'd seen along the frozen Freljord bridge of the Howling Abyss. It… My god, it was a Watcher.

My hands balled into fists, my teeth grinding as I summoned as much willpower as I could muster, but the feeling was off. I looked down at my furry paws, clenched into fists so small that the idea of them doing damage bordered on comedy. A sense of dread set in as I realized how weak I had become in this strange transformation, and it distracted me long enough to miss the Watcher preparing a strike.

The physical manifestation of cold hit me like a truck, waves of frozen power picking me up off my feet with actual physical force and throwing me like a ragdoll into the side of a hut. The sun-hardened mud bricks gave, but not enough to make it painless, and I squealed sharply as I felt thin and brittle bones break. My eyes shut from the pain, and when they opened I saw that I had gotten off better than the area around me. The spot of ground I had been standing at was frozen solid, cracks in the ground from instantly-frozen earth showing ice reaching into the depths of the dirt. The hut Gnar had been standing on had become another faded memory, another blur of nothingness, but I could feel the cold emanating from the blur and had a good idea what had happened to it and anyone unfortunate enough to be inside of it. For a moment I feared the worst, but then the air filled with the shrill war-cries of yordles.

Yordles, ten of them in total, sprung from the nearby huts armed with swords, spears, boomerangs and whatever sharp objects they could find, chittering angry cries as they gathered together near the edge of the icy ground. Gnar was among them, and I noticed that while he had gotten away, the tip of his tail was coated with a thin sheet of ice that told me it had been a close call. At once the yordles charged, throwing their spears and hucking their boomerangs with as much force as they could muster, their war cries drowning out the fear of the yordles that ran from the nearby huts away to whatever safety they could find.

It all amounted to nothing before the creature, which seemed entirely unaffected by the attacks. The pulsing blue lights along its tendrils thrummed with sickening power, and I could feel the air around me begin to crystallize. I looked away as it attacked, the blast of power creating a sickening sound made of yordle screams and frozen flesh splintering. I looked back to a blur, more artifacts of a past the yordle did not want to remember, but my other senses told me enough to understand the carnage. Of the ten yordles that fought, only Gnar remained, thrown by the force of the blast to the hut next to me, and apparently injured in a similar fashion. I saw blood dripping from a large cut across his arm and a missing chunk from his left ear, the cut frozen solid around once-warm flesh. In the wreckage I could almost smell the frostbite, the cool scent of preserved meat, and the tangible odor of fear. It sent a chill down my spine, brought on through emotion rather than temperature, and I pushed myself to my feet, but after a single step I felt a tearing agony in my leg and I toppled helplessly to the ground.

Nearby I saw Gnar stirring, already pushing himself to his feet. Defiance and anger fought for dominance of his expression, but when he saw me they both gave way to terror. He scampered over to me, ignorant of his injuries, and shook my shoulders until I whimpered weakly. "Gaboshee," I mumbled softly. I hurt. He tenderly touched my leg and it shot lances of cold pain through my body, eliciting another whine of agony. I looked into his eyes and saw the moment that fear and pain gave way to a boiling cauldron of anger, and in that moment I knew what was happening. And it scared me.

"Koono," he said slowly, his voice deepening as his fur darkened to a red the color of dried blood, "Koonoshee." No more hurt. He stepped away from me, his swelling arms dragging along the ground and his frame doubled in size in the span of a second. The Watcher, who had turned its attentions elsewhere, took notice of the growing Gnar, and I felt its cruel magic thick in the air as it prepared another blast. Gnar was halfway through his transformation, and in the cold I could see his hot breath escaping in massive puffs that rose a few feet in the air before vanishing into the cold night. He grunted as the pain of his injuries faded and he swelled even larger, but I knew with a sinking terror that he wouldn't make it in time. He towered over me, almost complete in his transformation when the Watcher attacked.

Gale winds of solidified cold struck the area like a tsunami, slamming into Gnar and rolling around him, just barely missing me by a hair's thickness. I felt the world around me freeze solid, the breath in my lungs threatening to solidify and strangle me to death. I wanted to move, to run away, but with Gnar's frozen body as my only shelter I tucked myself into as tight a ball as I could muster, trembling in the infinite cold, and I cried. Soon the onslaught of ice ended, and an unnerving calm fell over the area, as if it had suddenly become an undisturbed snowy morning. There were no more screams of terror, no more growls of anger, and the only cries of pain came weakly and quietly from my huddled body, hidden behind the ice statue that had once been my friend.

I shivered in the cold that seemed to encompass the entire world around me, my eyes clamped shut so tight that crystals of ice borne of my tears had begun to form to seal them. From very far away I heard shrill calls, the remaining yordles communicating to each other, and I felt the bone-chilling presence of the Watcher as it hovered by, the very air around it seeming to crystallize into snow. It felt as if my fur was going to freeze just by being nearby the creature, but my fear gave way to the slimmest of hopes when I heard the sound of ice cracking and fragmenting a few feet in front of me, right where Gnar had been frozen solid.

As the cracking grew louder I forced my eyes to open, breaking the small crystals that had formed around my eyelids so that I could gaze up at Gnar's frozen form. In the glow of the Watcher I could see spiderwebbing cracks forming in the frozen tomb, and underneath it Gnar's body began to shift and swell further, completing the transformation. A deep, rumbling tone began in his gut and doubled in force, then doubled again, resonating with the shattering until he flexed his massive muscles and broke free of his prison, roaring with a fury that provoked an ancient anger within me that I had to fight to control.

The Watcher's attention returned to Gnar as it was floating by, and it scrutinized him as if sizing up a piece of meat to be cut down, intelligent and utterly emotionless. I tried to cry out, to warn him of the Watcher's impending attack, but I could feel my body succumbing to the cold that cut right down to the very core of my being, and the words came out as a whisper, lost on the freezing winds. I felt my vision fading as the Watcher once again shook the very air with gathering power, and the temperature again did a nosedive. Gnar reached back, grabbing a destroyed chunk of a frozen mud hut, and threw it straight at the Watcher as it prepared to fire the shot. The dislodged rock collided with the Watcher and while it didn't do much, it made the creature sway, and its icy blast went wide of us, freezing an emptied hut into nothingness.

Gnar growled again, the sound making my bones shake, and I struggled fruitlessly to move, to get away from this clash of titans to a place where I could survive. I managed to push my shivering body to my feet, fear pumping me with enough adrenaline to ignore the pain in the exclusive name of survival, and I took a tentative step away from the two and towards the icy ground around me, the first step towards escape. With my back to the conflict I could still feel the air hum with growing power, another sign of the Watcher's unending attack, and heard the monstrous yordle howl in response. I felt the earth shake as Gnar ripped up the very ground itself, likely preparing another attack on the creature that I was convinced was a force of nature itself.

I made it as far as one of the few huts left intact when I heard the thud of impact and the terrible sound of the Watcher unleashing its power, and the two combined created a wave of sound that made my bones creak. I felt impacts all around me as fragments of ice and rock collided with the ground, but I was too weary to notice the dislodged chunk of frozen mud that fell from the hut and landed on my back.

Ice-cold pain ran laps along my body, and I squealed with equal parts surprise and agony and blood-chilling terror. I squirmed pathetically in an effort to escape, but something had broken in the impact, and I could feel warm blood pooling around the lower half of my body, which was slowly growing numb pinned underneath the slab of mudrock. I felt my vision fade in a haze of terrified pain as my hands scrabbled in futility at the ground, and was only dimly aware of the thuds of Gnar's titanic footsteps growing closer to me as I slipped from Gnar's memories back into the all-encompassing blackness of the judgment chamber.


	9. Chapter 9

_This bit gave me a great idea for another story. Unfortunately, I won't be finishing this one. Check Chapter 8 for more info._

_I recommend listening to the Infamous Second Son soundtrack during this chapter, especially the songs "Speed of Light" and "Double-Crossed"._

**Chapter 9**

The first sensation to return from the black abyss was the feeling of being pinned under a massive rock. My arms felt limp beside me, and I had lost feeling in my legs beyond pain. My cheek rested against the cold dirt, and through it I could feel tremors that shook me from the disorienting darkness and brought me and my senses crashing back to reality. My mental faculties returned to me swiftly and promptly reminded me of how it feels to have your legs crushed by rocks. Thankfully, it was a brief reminder, as a few moments of agony later the rock rolled off of my legs to the side and I felt a pair of strong hands lift me up.

"Hey, you alright Vi?" a gruff voice asked. He sounded annoyed, rushed, and concerned at the same time. "Can you walk?" Familiarity helped me recognize the owner of the voice, and with it came an unfamiliar pang of pain in my heart, not from physical injury, but something… deeper. I made it to my feet and checked myself- I was human again, but younger, thinner, and lacking the muscle I'd built up over the years. I touched a hand to my face and felt the irritated sting of raw skin, still tender from a tattoo I'd gotten the day before. I looked around, gathering myself and getting ahold of my surroundings, but the man that had helped me up grabbed either shoulder and wheeled me around to face him, apparently too hurried to let me get my bearings. "Get it together, Vi," the man said to me anxiously, "We've got to get the hell out of here while we can."

I stared at him for a few moments, studying his features as if digging up old memories, until I finally spoke with hesitation. "Y-Yeah, Dutch," I said with confusion, "What's going on?"

Dutch wasn't the leader of the group of people I ran with, but he was the one who brought me into it all, the one who helped me get off the streets, and I considered him a brother for all he'd done for me. He was a tall man, easily a head taller than me, with a chin chiseled out of marble that was only made better by his short-cropped hair and permanent grizzly stubble. His eyes blazed a bright shade of amber, and I could see the fear and worry for my safety resonating through them like waves on the surface of a pool. His hands were toughened by hard work over a hard life, and I could feel the weight of their grip as he let go of me, his powerful shoulders heaving with a frantic sigh.

"You kidding me? You take a hit to your head or something?" He gestured around him, and I realized we were standing in the middle of a mine, which meant the tremors were incredibly bad news. I saw flickering lights illuminate hallways in many directions, and in some cases they illuminated piles of rock where sections of the mine had caved in. "The job went south, Vi," he spat as he stepped past me, glancing down the hallways. "Cesar made the call. We're leaving, diamonds or no diamonds."

My legs shook, screaming with pain as weight came onto them, but they held themselves up despite the injury from the rocks. The tremors made it difficult to walk, but after a few moments I had my bearings and felt strength return to my legs. We ran as fast as we could, and I stayed a foot behind Dutch since he knew the way out better than I did. As we ran, my mind raced, memories flooding back. This was supposed to be our big break. A diamond vein had been discovered just out of Piltover, and we were here to take what was ours. If we could get ahold of it, maybe we could get out of the hole we lived in and become something more than gutter rats, than the human filth the general public thought we were. It was a chance at something greater, and it had collapsed all around us in an instant.

I remembered Cesar, the leader of our group, and how he'd gone on about this mining operation for days, how it could finally bring wealth and safety and security to the people who'd needed it. The people that suffered more than anyone else. People like us. I remembered that it wasn't just Dutch and I on this job, and a moment of fear almost made me stop running. "What happened to the others?" I asked suddenly, unable to hide the concern from my voice.

Dutch didn't look back at me. "I got out with Cesar, Colt and Trench just fine, but we hadn't seen you or Fix."

"Let's find her," I said immediately, and without hesitation I dug my heels into the dirt, slowing to a stop as I turned around to head back into the depths of the mines. I wasn't about to leave a friend down here.

I took a step and felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Vi," Dutch said slowly, and I could hear his voice shake. "I found Fix before you. She's gone."

It was like a hole had been carved out of my chest by some cruel cleaver. Fix had taught me everything she knew, and I didn't just respect her, I loved her like a sister. I stood where I was, my throat choking up as I fought back combined waves of nausea and sorrow. I felt the hand on my shoulder tighten. "Let's get out of here, Vi," Dutch's calm voice said, and I could hear the concern and fear bubbling under the surface of his cool head. He was hiding his emotions, but I knew him. He was scared he'd lose me, too.

I turned silently and ran, Dutch a few steps ahead of me. I couldn't let this get to me, couldn't lose another one of us today. I watched the tunnels as we raced through, and before long we came to a large, open antechamber, one we had snuck through shortly after breaching the mines. We were almost out. Yellow mining gear, some more of Piltover's techmaturgic innovation at work, sat vacated on the walls of the room, almost as if used as last-resort supports to keep more of the rocky ceilings from caving in. I felt a rumble down the path we had ran, and knew something that way had caved in. No going back down that road now.

We passed through into one of the main opening chambers, and down at the far end I could see the traces of natural light. I knew that through that door and down a short hallway was freedom, and something in me lifted me up and made my pain vanish in a sea of adrenaline as we raced through the chamber. And that was when I heard his voice.

"Somebody, please!" came the shrill cry of a man, his voice warped with abject terror. I turned my head sharply around the chamber, searching for the voice, and as it rang out again I saw its origin- a partially-caved in second hallway, halfway between the one we had come from and the one we were headed to. I could hear the fear in his voice, and the sound of the voices far away, down the same hallway, and knew that they could not save themselves. Someone had to do something.

I felt my footsteps slow, and the thought set into my brain that I had to help them out. Dutch hadn't read my mind this time, but he had glanced back in time to see me slow, see the thoughts crossing my mind. "Let's get out of here, Vi," he said hurriedly, his pace slowed but his feet still taking him steadily towards escape. "This whole place is going down."

"We gotta help them, Dutch," I said firmly, the decision beginning to set itself in my head. I wanted to leave, to get out of there, but I couldn't ignore them, couldn't tear my mind from their fear, their absolute soul-crushing fear of being crushed or starved or strangled among the darkness and dirt. I resonated with a fear of my own, with every fear I'd had all these years of dying alone on the streets because no one had cared enough to help me when I couldn't help myself.

"They can save themselves," Dutch said as his steps slowed, the idea dawning on him that I wasn't about to leave with him. "We've gotta do the same."

"They won't make it," I said as my eyes scanned the chamber. "The rocks are too heavy. If I could find a good wedge, something to pry in there, we could-"

"Leave them, Vi," Dutch said firmly, and I felt his hand touch my arm, right on time with another tremor that made me lose my balance slightly. I spun around and looked at him, at the worry and concern in his face, and it dawned on me- Dutch only cared about getting me out alive. He felt the same grief for Fix that I felt, but something in him made it possible for him to ignore those people. It was a sickening side of him, something I hadn't noticed before. He looked at me with eyes that plead for my cooperation, but there was something different in them too, a layer of ice that hid his heart from my gaze.

"You'd let them die?" I asked, and I couldn't hide the apprehension and disgust from my voice or my expression.

"We have to look after our own," he responded shortly, and I felt his hand tug gently at my arm.

I ripped it away from his grasp, taking a step back. "These people are just like us, Dutch," I said firmly, anger and shock adding an edge the words normally would have lacked. "They aren't some upper-class fat cats, they're just normal people no better off than we are, and more importantly, they need our help." As I finished my words I heard their cries again, and the sound of unfiltered terror added a note of desperation to the swirling cloud of frantic emotion coursing through the air around us. "Please, Dutch," I begged, unable to hide my emotions any longer.

I saw Dutch visibly harden, his concern hiding behind a will of immobile stone. He'd done this before, when the chips were down and lives were on the line, and it had made the others rally to him, made us do things we didn't think we could, accomplish things we didn't think were possible. My god, he was going to help. A surge of desperate energy swept through me, and I felt a smile creep up on my face. "Thank you, Dutch," I began, stepping towards a shovel I had seen on the ground, "I think we-"

"We're leaving, Vi," Dutch said in that voice of absolute stone, and it froze me dead in my tracks. I had misread him, and the realization that he was about to force me to leave these people to die felt like a knife twisted into my spine. I returned my gaze to him, fear and incomprehension written into my eyes, and saw his resolution in return as he stepped towards me, calmly but quickly. I took a step back, but was too late. I felt his hand wrap around my arm, and the feeling of comforting support had vanished. He felt like an entirely different person. I struggled, but his grasp felt like a clamp around me, dragging me away.

"THIS ISN'T RIGHT, DUTCH!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, trying to wrench myself from his grasp in futility. "THEY'LL DIE! WE CAN'T LEAVE THEM!" I struck at his arm with my free hand, but if the words or the blows had done anything to slow him, he didn't show it. His eyes were focused on the light of the outside, and step by step he pulled me closer. In desperation I latched my other hand onto his elbow, twisted my trapped hand to expose his forearm, and I bit down as hard as I could.

Dutch's scream was almost as loud as my own as he twisted his arm, relinquishing his grasp and letting me stumble backwards. He caressed the bite marks with his other hand, and after a moment I saw blood drip between the fingers. He stared at me as if I had suddenly stripped naked and painted myself with my excrement, like I had completely lost my mind. "I'm helping them," I said slowly, unable to hide the shaking fear from my voice, "With or without you."

Dutch took another step towards me and this time I took several back. I didn't make an effort to hide the betrayal I felt, the fear of someone who had once been so close. This time, it was Dutch's turn to beg. "Vi, please," he said softly, and I began to see the stone in his gaze melt away, letting fear and concern boil to the surface. "There isn't enough time for this, the cops will be here any min-"

"The cops can't save them," I interrupted him, and glanced down at the shovel I had noticed before. It was only a few feet away, off to the side and roughly the same distance from both of us. I edged towards it and could see that Dutch had the same idea. "And I can't leave them." I took another step towards the tool, the weapon, and so did he.

"I'm not going to lose you," he said with a hard edge to his words that didn't entirely hide the fear. "Not like I lost Fix. There's been enough bloodshed for tonight."

"And you'd ignore the workers, the people who get by just like us, just so your little crew doesn't get picked off?" Again, I couldn't hide the disgust. This wasn't the Dutch I knew, right? I almost didn't want to believe I'd missed this side of him before. I took another step closer to the shovel. So did Dutch.

I saw his eyes harden again, and I wanted to believe I didn't know what he was going to say, I wanted to believe he would take my side, help me save them, but as his mouth opened I felt the words come straight from my mind, exactly as I had predicted. "They don't matter, Vi," he said calmly, rationally, pleadingly. "You matter."

"Fuck you, Dutch," I swore furiously as I dove for the shovel. I got a hand on it, right by the head, but as I lifted it I felt Dutch pull it towards him. He was stronger older, but I had leverage. I growled as we struggled, but for all of my twisting and pulling I wasn't able to get the handle away from him. Desperate, I lashed out at his knee, and as I felt the bones crack under my foot his howl of rage and pain weakened his grip enough for me to wrestle the shovel away from him. I took a step back and Dutch did the same, one hand on his injured knee. He shot me a gaze that seemed betrayed more than hurt, concerned more than angry. Despite all of that, he still cared about me more than anything. It was disgusting. "You don't want to help, then get the hell out," I spat with acid lining the curse, "Take another step towards me and I'll bash your goddamn brains in."

Dutch didn't respond, and despite his gaze of utter stone bearing down on me he didn't step forward. He must have felt the stone in my heart, understood that this wasn't something I'd back down from. Not now, not ever. I may have been young, a criminal, with no one but Dutch and the gang to care for me, but that didn't change what was right and what was wrong. I didn't let my eyes leave his until he turned away, limping as fast as he could with a damaged knee until he reached the exit. The moment he did I ran, back towards the antechamber as an idea constructed itself in my head. I could still hear the screams, which meant I wasn't too late, but the sound of another collapsing chamber nearby told me I didn't have much time.

Back in the antechamber I saw what we had ran by on the way out, the yellow-painted mining rigs. They were meant for digging, which made them perfect for getting through the rubble, but there were two things in my way. One, they were holding up the ceiling in this area, and getting caved in on wouldn't help me save those people. Two, I had no damn clue how to pilot them. I swore, desperation making me want to cry out in anger, then I noticed their massive hands, used for crushing rock and transporting the pieces. There was something I could use there. I ran to the nearest one, searching the joints of its arms for weaknesses, something I could exploit to rip the things off. A joining weld on the third rig I checked showed signs of structural damage, and a seam at the elbow of the thing had split. Jackpot.

I stuck the tip of the shovel into the crack and pulled, my arms screaming with the exertion. The rig creaked wildly, but didn't give. I tried again on the other arm, but found no more success. I was about to look for other options when I spotted an arc-welding device left on the seats of one of the rigs, penned in by the glass and thought safe until the place had needed to be vacated. It took several hammering blows from the shovel to smash through the glass, but with the hextech-powered welder in my hands I had a means to get things done at last.

Dismantling the rig without sacrificing its ceiling-carrying spine took more time than expected, but I managed to keep the fear and hurry from making my hands shake long enough to make a series of clean cuts through the metal, right at the structural weaknesses. The fists thudded to the ground heavily, and yet the shake of their landing was unnoticeable among the tremors. I tried to pick them up but their weight was massively greater than I had expected, which meant I needed a support structure. The fire of the arc-welder lit the darkening antechamber as I carefully destroyed the rig, taking bits and pieces from what I could on them without sacrificing their integrity. After a tense few minutes I had done it- the gloves sat on the ground with a rig of yellow-gray metal around them, just enough to support my skeleton and make me able to lift the damn things. It wasn't pretty and it'd probably fall apart, but if I had done things right it would work. For a bit.

I felt a rock land on my shoulder and looked up in time to watch a crack split through the ceiling above me. I had taken too much from the rig, and it had become the weak link supporting the ceiling, only scarce minutes from snapping entirely. A curse left my lips as I moved to my rig, and I set my hands into the heavy metal fists as quickly but carefully as I could manage. Two thin metal pads for my feet helped ground the weight, and I pressed my arms and back against the rough metal beams that made up the rig's improvised exoskeleton and prepared to lift.

My design worked, barely. As I raised my upper body from the ground the joints in the skeleton squealed with the ear-splitting sound of metal scraping against metal, but they bent and supported me, allowing me to life the heavy fists from the ground and drag myself to my feet. I fought to gain my balance as I felt dirt and rocks falling around me. The antechamber would collapse any time now, I had to move. I threw one leg forward, straining against the metal skeleton, and with a scream of protest the leg moved, my fleshy limb straining against it as I pulled it forward.

I continued my slow progress, one step at a time, until I had left the antechamber, and immediately began my slow and heavy trod towards the caved-in tunnel. A surge of adrenaline combined with an equal surge of confidence, pushing me forward step by heavy step as my muscles screamed in exertion trying to pull the heavy steel frame along with me, despite it being lighter than the metal fists themselves. Progress, Vi, keep making progress.

After what felt like an eternity I moved the rig to within range of the rubble. I could hear the screams coming through the rock and as I reached it I met theirs with one of my own. "STEP BACK!" I howled as I pulled back a fist, poised and ready to fly like a battering ram. I gave them a moment then swung in, burying the fist in the rock like a hot knife through butter. Rocks from the rubble tumbled around me, gathering around my feet, and more still fell as I pulled the fist away from the cave-in. With a cry of effort I slammed the second fist in, bashing away part of the stone. I continued, swinging three more times before the rubble had cleared enough to let the miners leave.

One of them, a stocky man of dark complexion, stopped at the mouth of the tunnel as the others passed, looking up at me. "You're…" he said, and I realized that he must have seen us as we snuck in.

He opened his mouth again, and I imagined he wanted to ask why I was helping, but I interrupted him. "Are there others?" I asked, peering down the tunnel. It was dark, and I couldn't see well enough to tell for myself.

The man nodded. "Two of them," he said fearfully, "They're hurt."

I grimaced, slipping my hands out from the machine. Without my support it toppled over, and the metal thunk made the man cringe. "Help me save them," I said as I ran past him, into the darkness. I didn't look to see if he followed, but after a moment I heard footsteps behind me and a fading light from the man shined past me, illuminating the way ahead.

We must have gone quite a ways down into the tunnels before I saw the people he had mentioned. Two men sat against a wall, seemingly ignorant of the rocks falling around them. It wasn't until I got closer that I realized that one of them was unconscious, the other had an expression wracked with pain. The one man seemed to be mumbling to himself in his unconscious stupor, words that meant nothing but felt vaguely familiar. I noticed his shoes had been removed, his feet blackened with frostbite. Could it be… The second was awake, but in no better shape. I couldn't see blood, but the unnatural bends and breaks in his right leg explained his agony. He looked up at us and set his eyes on the man following me. "I told you to get out of here, Jarah," he said with strain in his voice. By now we were close enough that I could see lines of sweat on his face through the dirt.

"We're getting you out of here," I interrupted, kneeling down next to him. "Give me your arm."

The man obeyed, but when he turned his gaze to me I saw apprehension. "Aren't you- URGH!- one of those thieves?"

I frowned, both from the strain of helping the man up and the thought that crossed my head. I hadn't realized it, but Cesar would be absolutely furious with me for sticking behind, and for disobeying and injuring Dutch like I had. I couldn't go back there, not now. Maybe in time, once he'd had the chance to forgive me, but did I want to? It was a question I'd have to wrestle with in my head, and now was not the time to do that wrestling. "I'm here," I said gruffly as I shifted to support his weight, allowing him to touch the floor with his leg without putting weight on it, "And they're not. That's what matters." I looked to the man that had followed me down- Jarah was his name, I guessed- and waited until he had picked up the unconscious man, carrying him over his shoulders with the legs over one side and the arms and head over the other.

As we made our way back out I heard the sounds of sirens at the mouth of the mineshaft. An instinctive fear gripped me, and for a moment I paused. The man leaning on me didn't expect it, and I heard his grunt of pain as he stepped on his bad leg and I wasn't there to support him. I hesitated but picked up the slack, and with Jarah ahead of me we walked out into the night.

The fresh air hit me like a wave, making me cough in realization of how much dust and dirt I'd been inhaling. I wiped at my brow and my hands came back stained with dirt, and perhaps it was a stroke of luck that they had- the police who had likely come to arrest me and my kind didn't seem to notice me. If I had to guess, the dirt obscured my face, covering my tattoo and staining my pink hair a messy brown-black. It wasn't perfect, but maybe if I could just slip away…

A medical tech came over to help me, and without a word I allowed the tech to shift the man's weight onto his shoulders, moving the load off of mine. As the load left my shoulders I met the man's eyes, and saw through the pain to his fixed gaze, equal parts gratitude and measured caution as he looked at me. I didn't know what my face looked like, but I imagine I appeared as neither the hero nor the villain to the man. He didn't open his mouth to speak, but instead he offered me a short nod, wincing through the pain to offer his thanks without drawing attention to me. I appreciated the gesture more than he knew, but I still had to get away before someone snagged me for questioning. The moment I was freed of the burden I began moving away from the scene, dodging the eyes of the law as long as my dirty disguise held. I made it to the edge of the ring of cars about the scene and was about to move into the crowd when I felt a hand grip my shoulder. I spun back around, fear written all over my face, and prepared to cut and run from the law when I saw Jarah's concerned eyes on mine.

"Thank you for your help," he said softly, his voice almost inaudible over the sirens and bustle of the rescue effort underway. "We would have died. You have saved many lives this night." His accent was thick, reminding me of Qarif's Shuriman dialect. The look in his eyes was one of genuine thanks, and a kind of warmth I hadn't expected to see from someone I'd tried to rob.

I didn't know how to respond. I wasn't used to hearing that from complete strangers. "I… Don't mention it," I said shortly as I pulled my arm away, "Don't mention it to anyone."

I took a step away from him into the crowd, and my thoughts about him had begun to fade when I heard his voice echo louder than it should have through the busy night.

"Why do you want Gnar to join the League, Vi?"

Recognition rushed back to me as well as a sense of myself, removing my immersion from the memories of my teenage years. I looked back at Jarah, and his face seemed foreign, alien, like an entirely different person. He didn't just see me, he saw through me, and I was sure it was the influence of the summoners that had changed the memory's emotions so drastically. I sucked in a breath as I let my pounding heart steady itself, and I took a moment amongst the fragments of my memories to gather my words.

"Because he's a kid," I said to the memory of Jarah slowly, my gaze leveled and resolute, "Not a monster. He deserves a chance."

If there was any emotional response, it did not show on Jarah's face. Instead he observed me silently, his expression absolutely unreadable. "How does it feel," he asked calmly, "Exposing your mind?"

I thought about my experiences, how I'd felt reliving that night, how I'd felt seeing Dutch betray what I believed in all for some broken idea of camaraderie. I knew in the back of my mind that they were still out there, older and wiser than they had been back then. But they hadn't changed, not like I had. That was something, as the enforcer of Piltover and as someone who had once thought of them as family, that I could not allow to continue in my town. I tightened one hand into a fist, and for a moment I thought I could feel the familiar power of my gauntlet wrap around my hand.

"It's reminded me that I have work to do."


End file.
